


Like the Wolf

by NancyTWriter



Category: Supernatural
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-13
Updated: 2019-11-13
Packaged: 2021-01-29 18:02:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 30,681
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21414352
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NancyTWriter/pseuds/NancyTWriter
Summary: AU. Dean and Cas share a passion for each other and an obsession with increasingly violent fantasies. Kinkiness, darkness, death.





	Like the Wolf

“Supernatural” is copyrighted by Warner Brothers Entertainment Inc.

[Author’s Note: This story is the bastard child of a hundred maniacs. (Yay for those who get the reference!) (a) The rock group Hidden Citizens did a gorgeous orchestral cover of Duran Duran’s “Hungry Like the Wolf.” This music inspired (b) a YouTube account holder called I’m Not The Type To Get Involved In A Relationship to sketch out an eight-sentence story featuring Dean and Cas as lovers and serial murderers. I’m Not The Type then had the profound good taste to send the song request and story idea to (c) Darker DemonDove.

DemonDove (formerly known on YouTube as AngelDove) is an amazing creator of fan videos. Her work is professional quality, and consistently outstanding even over dozens of videos. She has a separate YouTube channel for dark fan videos, logically called Darker DemonDove. Her stunning “Hungry Like the Wolf” video based on I’m Not The Type’s story idea inspired (d) me to write this story. It doesn’t follow the story line of the video, but that’s definitely the inspiration, and I’ve used as many moments from the video as possible.

I want to thank Janet Fosgate of The Jigger in Kansas City, Missouri, and Capt. Kirk E. Lane of the Mission, Kansas Police Department, for telling me how people in their respective professions would handle difficult situations. And of course, as always, my buddy Robyn, the world’s most supportive human!]

Rexburg, Idaho, June 13th. Cas Novak had always had a freakish memory for dates that were important to him personally, but even without that gift, he’d have remembered the date he met Dean Winchester.

He’d just given a big thumbs-up to a matron buying a lottery ticket – she looked at him a little strangely, maybe he was overdoing the normal-cheerful schtick – and behind her in line at the counter was a man – 

Well, stunningly good-looking didn’t cover it. But that wasn’t all. Dean had a lupine smile, confident, rapacious. “I’ll have some beef jerky and a pack of menthols,” he said, and locked eyes with – 

With a Gas-n-Sip clerk wearing a stupid bright blue vest. Cas wouldn’t have blamed him for laughing or looking away. But he didn’t. He was seeing what Cas preferred to call his “unusual” qualities, and the normal-cheerful schtick was useless, Cas was exposed. The man’s own unusual qualities ran hot and just beneath the surface, he barely bothered to conceal them.

“The jerky’s over there.” He managed to formulate a complete sentence and raise a hand to point. He turned toward the cigarette rack, asking, “What brand of menthol?”

“What do you recommend?”

As though cancer sticks were fine wine. “I don’t smoke.”

The man grinned again. “Shoulda guessed that.”

Cas turned back to face him. “You shouldn’t either. You have a good voice. It would be a shame to lose it.”

The man raised his eyebrows, a little admiration for Cas’ directness. “All right then, I’ll skip ’em,” he said, and went to the jerky rack. Cas watched him openly, no point in feigning courtesy.

He paid in cash, which meant Cas had to give him change. Cas focused on not touching the man’s hand unnecessarily while the man, Cas knew, was focusing on his face.

The customer stopped at the magazine rack by the door and picked up a car magazine, glanced at it for a moment, held it up to show Cas. “I’m takin’ this. You don’t mind, do you?”

“I need to ring it up,” Cas said as the customer tossed him a wink and a merry smile, walking out the door with the magazine.

Cas watched the door for a moment, starting when a teenager on his phone banged it open.

He sighed a little, went to the magazines, checked the price of the stolen one. He went back to the register and rang it up, paying for it out of his own pocket. Then he wrote what it cost him on a sticky note and put that in his wallet.

June 16th. After a couple of days off, Cas was working the last shift alone, about to lock up and start the closing ritual, when he saw the thief filling his car out front. “The thief” was what he’d been calling the man in his masturbation fantasies for the last three nights.

The thief was using a Gas-n-Sip Eazy Pump card, which customers obtained by presenting a credit card. They’d apply the cost against his credit card unless he came into the store to pay, and Cas’ breath came a little faster.

He moved to the end of the counter and a couple of feet into the store, a spot he knew was out of range of either security camera, and waited.

The thief came in looking tired and testy, not at all the magnetic personality of three days before. But his mouth was as sensual, the spring in his leg muscles as promising. He looked at Cas with a bored expression and turned toward the snack chips aisle.

“You owe me six dollars thirty-five cents,” Cas said.

The thief stopped dead, then turned, looking bemused. “What did you say?”

“I said, you owe me six dollars thirty-five cents for the magazine you stole three days ago.”

Three steps, the thief was so close they were almost touching, so fast Cas flinched. But he held his ground, trying not to lose focus, trying to ignore the beginning of a sudden erection.

The thief was smiling now. “I was under the impression that was a gift from you to me.”

“You were under no such impression. You know you shoplifted, and I reimbursed the company out of my own pocket.”

“Well. You shouldn’t have done that.”

“You are obligated to repay me.”

The thief rolled his eyes, looking around the otherwise empty store. “‘Obligated?’ What are you, the Gas-n-Sip police?” He leaned so close, Cas could feel the breath on his face. “You want to put me in handcuffs?”

It took Cas a moment to be sure that his voice would be steady. “I just told you. You know what I want.”

The thief ran his eyes down Cas’ body and back up again. “Yeah, I do.”

He turned abruptly, pulled out a money clip as he walked to the other end of the counter, and put a twenty by the register. “For the gas. Wouldn’t want to steal anything,” he said, still smiling, and stole a bag of chips on his way out the door.

Cas stood still for a moment, watching the thief cross the parking lot. He seemed to have forgotten how to breathe.

Then his unusual qualities took over. He normally tried to prevent that, but tonight he yielded, going to the door and locking it, moving to the side exit as he slapped off some of the light switches, letting himself out quickly. The closing ritual was utterly unimportant.

He looked around the corner of the building, where the parking lot lights showed the thief in his car, chewing as he folded a half-eaten bag of chips and tossed it on the passenger seat. He started the car and pulled out.

Cas’ car was parked at the side of the building. He went to it, got in, pulled out of the lot, spotted the thief’s car, and fell in a few car lengths behind it. He was moving more smoothly than he’d have thought possible, eyes clear, single-minded. And the thief’s car was easy to follow, a black behemoth from the 1960s, before anyone cared about mileage.

Even at 11:00 at night there were a few other cars on the main road, but when the black car turned left onto a residential road it was just the two of them. Cas didn’t know if the thief realized he was being followed, and didn’t care. 

The black car took several turns through streets lined with single-family single-story homes. Clearly the driver realized by now that he was being followed, but he certainly didn’t seem concerned, obeying every speed limit, stopping at every stop sign.

Finally he turned left onto Highway 33. There was a little more traffic here, but not so much that the car was hard to follow, and Cas tailed it to an edge of town near the railroad tracks.

There were times when this part of town was active; this was not one of those times. There were streetlights, but without the lights of homes or open businesses, spaces between the lamps were pitch-black.

The muscle car pulled over and parked on the street in front of the offices of a lumber yard. Hulking stacks of lumber on canopied sets of shelves about 30 feet long, looking like black monoliths at this moment, formed a narrow passageway between the lumber yard and a defunct farm supply store next door.

The thief got out of his car and, without a look back at Cas, acting like he had some kind of business to attend to, disappeared between the monoliths and the building.

Cas turned off his engine and killed the headlights. He got out of the car and stood, letting his eyes adjust. There was a train whistle somewhere far away, not on the nearby tracks; nothing moved out here.

“You think I’m afraid,” Cas whispered.

He walked the block to the thief’s car and looked down the passage where he’d disappeared. Nothing living was visible.

He started down the passage, monoliths on his right and a wall of peeling paint and boarded windows on his left, only remembering when he was about halfway to the back of the building that he was still wearing the stupid blue Gas-n-Sip vest. He certainly didn’t look like a stealthy tracker, but he didn’t want to lose the thief, so he moved forward, being as quiet as he could, peering to his right over an empty shelf.

The thief stepped out from his left, grabbed Cas’ vest and spun him around by it like a stone in a slingshot, slamming Cas’ back painfully against the back wall of the old store. He was pinned there by the other man’s body, a hand gripping his wrist, a knee between his legs, chest against his chest.

“So what are you?” the thief whispered in his ear. “FBI? State cops? Or just local law?”

“I’m – I’m not a cop. I just – ”

“You were just following me for fun?” The thief reached under his brown leather jacket and pulled out a knife. Cas later learned that this was considered a small-bladed tactical knife, but at the time it looked like a machete, and he felt a sick jolt of terror, his heart racing.

“You know who I am, don’t you?” the thief said.

“I don’t – I’m not – ”

The knife was sheathed as fast as it had shown, and the thief cupped Cas’ chin, looking into his eyes with a smile, speaking very distinctly as though giving instructions. “I think you know I’m a killer. And I know you’re a cop.”

Oh. Role-playing.

Cas wasn’t especially good at this, even when he wasn’t contending with tachycardia and a bruised ribcage. But he managed to stammer out, “Even if – even if I were, I wouldn’t tell you.”

Still smiling, the killer gave a slow nod, as if to say, Well done. Then he asked, “So what do you want?”

“What do you – What – ”

“What bribe will you take to keep from reporting that you found me?”

He unfastened Cas’ pants, and his warm slightly rough hand smoothed under Cas’ underwear and clutched his straining cock. The confident pulling and squeezing, the hardness of that splendid body, were a thousand times better than he’d fantasized. He came almost at once, thrusting desperately, uttering broken groaning gasps, clutching at the man’s shoulders to stay upright, pleasure blasting his brain.

The killer gave him a last couple of caresses. Then he wiped his hand on Cas’ vest, unhooked Cas’ hands from his shoulders, and pushed Cas to his knees – not hard to do, since there were no bones in his legs.

“Or, I don’t know, would you rather have something like this?”

He unzipped his jeans briskly, put his hand behind Cas’ head, and guided Cas’ mouth to his groin.

Cas sucked and pulled eagerly, wanting to give as much pleasure as he’d received, even if that seemed impossible. But the killer thrust into his mouth spasmodically, demanding more as if he loved what he was getting, clutching Cas’ head and shoulder.

He came in Cas’ mouth, but then pulled out and, deliberately, splattered Cas’ vest with semen. When he’d caught his breath he said, “So much for – your cover – as a Gas-n-Sip wage slave, Steve.”

Cas laughed explosively, wiping his mouth. “It’s not my vest. Mine got torn, it takes a week to replace them. My name’s Cas.”

The killer gave a bark of laughter, zipping up. “Well. Better start workin’ on a story for Steve.”

Cas looked up. “What’s your name?”

The killer hesitated. “Don’t you know? Detective?”

“The name under all the aliases.”

There was a moment of silence, as if the man were as startled by Cas’ sincerity as Cas himself was. Then he said abruptly, “My name’s Dean Winchester,” and left. A moment later Cas heard the roar of the muscle car’s engine from the street.

It was two minutes before he pulled himself together enough to zip up his pants. It was three more minutes before he got to his feet and staggered back to his car.

June 20th. Cas was going quietly insane. All he could think about was Dean’s provocative smile, Dean’s hand on his cock. His mind was glazed over, hypersexual, and his concentration was shot.

He’d never felt the need to open a Facebook account. Feeling pathetic, he’d done so, even though he was betting Dean Winchester wasn’t on there.

He was, but after looking over his page, Cas knew almost nothing more about the man. Infrequent posts celebrated victories by the University of Kansas basketball team, noted his attendance at a car show in Idaho Falls, responded to a friend’s engagement picture with, “Congratulations, great looking couple.” Of the thief with lava just under the surface, the master of mind-blowing anonymous sex, there was no hint.

Maybe his Facebook friends saw more, and Cas came damn close to making a friend request, but held off, in part because he doubted if Dean’s friends saw more than strangers saw.

Two posts caught his attention. One from the engaged friend, posted about six months ago, read, “You were right, Sam figured it out. Thanks for the referral. Nice guy, too. How are you two brothers?” To which Dean had replied, “He got the brains I got the looks, fuck you very much,” with a laughing-face emoji.

The other was a picture posted about a year ago, captioned “Meg Heller was with Sam Winchester, Dean Winchester, and Jim White at Idaho Falls Bar and Grill.” There were three men sitting at a table in the photo, so presumably Meg had taken the picture. Dean was on the left, looking into the camera with a direct almost challenging smile that made Cas’ breath come fast. He assumed that the lanky, long-haired one on the right, with the stupid grin of the slightly intoxicated, not quite looking directly into the camera, was Sam. He made that assumption because the man in the middle wasn’t looking at the camera at all; he was looking at Dean in a way that would have been really weird if he were Dean’s brother.

Open longing, somewhat mournful. Cas empathized, but you couldn’t look at Dean like that, he’d hate it. Nobody would like it that much, but Dean would outright hate it.

White had a red mark on his arm, maybe a welt. Cas wondered if Dean had given it to him. He looked back at Dean’s grin and felt himself getting out of control again.

Maybe he needed a splash of cold water. He went to White’s page.

He was as quiet about his personal life as Dean was. He worked at Brigham Young University-Idaho, here in Rexburg. He obviously enjoyed classical music, reporting his attendance at piano and symphony concerts and giving brief, enthusiastic, knowledgeable reviews. He shared photos of himself with his mother and father, sister and brother-in-law, and nephew. If the Meg Heller photo had ever been on the page, it had been deleted. 

And then, about two months after the photo had been posted on Dean’s page, White had posted something entirely atypical: “Life is Hell and then you die. If you’re lucky.”

There was a cascade of replies from friends, all baffled and worried by the post. His sister simply wrote, “You’re a good person and a good brother. Things will be all right if you believe.”

Cas shook his head slightly. Things wouldn’t be all right if White kept falling for men like Dean. He clearly needed someone as emotional as he was, no matter how he tried to keep his emotions a secret from his friends and co-workers. And Dean needed someone whose emotions were enclosed safely, maybe revealed occasionally under rare circumstances.

Someone like me! How convenient! he’d thought with a half-ashamed grin as he’d left the website.

That was in the middle of the four days of erotic obsession. By day he stared numbly at TV or slept after vigorous masturbation that left him feeling empty. At night he stumbled around the Gas-n-Sip ringing things up wrong and spilling ice on the floor.

Then on the night of June 20th, he was sweeping the floor, about to end the closing ritual, when someone rattled the locked front door right next to him. He looked around, and Dean was standing there.

They stared at each other through the glass for a moment.

Then Cas swallowed and opened the door a crack. “We’re closed.”

“I noticed. What the hell, I thought you guys were open twenty-four hours.”

Cas pointed to where the hours of operation were printed perfectly clearly on the door. “That’s the other guys. We have a better selection of auto supplies and reading material.”

That amused Dean. “So. Stalked any killers lately, Detective?”

Cas’ heart hammered, but his voice was steady. “I’m always on the hunt.”

Dean turned and left, getting into his car. Cas relocked the door and dropped the broom in the middle of the floor, heading for the side exit.

The black car led Cas back to the residential area where it had been the other night. At a stoplight he tore off the blue vest and unbuttoned the top two buttons of his shirt.

Dean slowed in the middle of a block of worn but well-kept 1950s ranch houses, turning into a driveway. Cas drove past, did a U-turn at the end of the block and drove back slowly, pulling up on the other side of the street as Dean was unlocking his door.

Cas strode across the lawn as Dean looked around, putting the keys back in his pocket. “You’re under arrest, Winchester,” he said as he reached the door.

“For what? Loitering on my porch?”

The last four days of pent-up passion burst as Cas grabbed Dean, spun him, and brought one arm up behind his back. He crushed Dean up against the door, his groin against Dean’s butt, his mouth at Dean’s ear, as he managed to choke out, “You know what you did.”

Dean caught his breath, then said, “Yeah, I do. But all the evidence is in the house, and you won’t get in without a warrant.”

Cas’ brain was blank, overtaken by lust. He literally said, “Um – uh – ”

Dean said (in a tone clearly implying “Lord, give me patience”), “Unless, of course, you illegally force me into the house.”

Cas twisted the doorknob and pushed Dean at the same time. They both stumbled over the threshold and crashed to the floor. Dean kicked the door closed and Cas rolled him over, wrenching down the neck of his T-shirt and sinking his teeth into Dean’s neck.

Dean went still for a moment and moaned. Cas grabbed the button of Dean’s jeans with a shaking hand. Dean let him get one hand inside and then grabbed him. They grappled, rolling on the floor and banging into a chair, wrestling for superiority. The knife sheath on Dean’s belt gave Cas a moment’s unease, but it was well secured.

Cas won, kneeling astride Dean’s chest, one leg pinning Dean’s arm. Dean grunted in pain and laughed at the same time. “OK, you’re stronger than you look.”

Cas opened his pants and prodded Dean’s sensual mouth. “Give me – ” He was incapable of anything else. “Give, give me – ”

Dean let him in and went to work. Ferocious pleasure shot up Cas’ penis and spread through his pulsing thighs, his shaking hands, his heart, his open mouth. A last shred of thought warned him not to hurt Dean, but then it was all gone, his mind his control his balance, and he fell sideways, hitting the floor heavily, dragging a leg across Dean’s face.

After a few moments Dean pulled himself out from under Cas like someone who’s just had a bookshelf collapse on him. Cas was relaxed to the point of anesthesia, watching numbly as Dean sat in the chair, took off his work boots and socks, then stood and stripped off everything else.

Greek god, Cas thought, actual thought beginning to return to his brain.

Dean squatted beside Cas, smiling that wolf’s grin, and Cas stared at him. “OK,” Dean said, “you know you’re going to have to pay for that, right?”

Cas drew a breath. “I would expect – nothing less.”

Dean chuckled and put his hands under Cas’ arms. Cas shambled to his feet and Dean marched him down the hall to the bedroom.

Twenty minutes later, now also naked, bent over Dean’s bed, Cas lay gasping for air. His ass hurt brutally, but everything else felt so good he didn’t even want to move from the awkward position.

Dean came back out of the bathroom and pulled and manipulated Cas onto the bed. He turned the light and lay down next to Cas, catching Cas’ legs between his own. Cas didn’t know if he was being protected or held captive, and didn’t care.

June 21st. They both called in sick to work. They talked about going to lunch, but didn’t. They talked about going to dinner, but ordered in pizza. Dean had enough beer and lube to withstand the Apocalypse, so they were set.

They’d both slept for hours that afternoon. Cas felt relaxed, alert, a light mist of euphoria making even the pizza taste better. He was wearing his pants and his shirt, unbuttoned; Dean was wearing only jeans, and Cas was trying to think if there was anything more sensual than watching a shirtless Greek god lick pizza sauce off of his fingertips.

“So what do you like to do in your spare time?”

The question took Cas by surprise. “Ah – Well, I jog in the mornings. I watch TV, do crossword puzzles. Uh, I went to the Legacy Flight Museum last year.”

“Not a lot to do in good ol’ Rexburg.”

“Well, there’s the Christmas concert at BYU-Idaho.”

Dean chuckled. “You Mormon?”

“No.” He didn’t even bother asking about Dean. “I think that makes about seven of us in town.”

“Maybe ten. You know, in some ways it’s great – the town’s so neat and clean, if you’re raising kids it’s safe, and all that. But finding a place to get a drink is a whole project. And those poor guys – ” Dean shook his head. “They’re so deep in the closet they’re standin’ on shoeboxes. No way anything can work out with them.”

“You don’t have any – difficulties with your neighbors?”

“Hey, I can be low-profile when I want to. You know, actually, I don’t see them much. We wave at each other mowing our lawns, that kind of thing. Other than that I’m either inside the house – ” Dean looked around – “which I really like – or I’m in Idaho Falls. Which ain’t exactly Vegas either, but it’s – ”

“Livelier.”

“Livelier. I can’t figure out how we never met before. Two gay non-Mormons in Rexburg?”

“Well, my work schedule just changed two months ago.”

“Which was about the time I moved here. I had an apartment in Idaho Falls, but I really wanted to rent a house, and this was the one I liked and could afford.”

Cas smiled. “So we were fated to meet. Oh, books.”

“Hm?”

“I read books in my spare time. History especially.”

“My brother Sam likes history. You two should talk sometime.” Dean lifted his beer glass and studied it as he asked, “You ever write, paint, anything like that?”

“No.” Cas gave a short laugh. “You may have noticed that I lack imagination.”

“Bull. Everyone has imagination. Some people just squash it when they get older. When you were a kid, though, I bet you played cops and robbers or pretended to be a knight slaying a dragon, something like that.”

There was a moment’s silence. “I used to pretend that I lived in a boarding school.”

Dean blinked. “Boarding school.”

“Yes, with lots of other students. I named some of them.” Cas’ gaze was distant, a little smile on his face. “I haven’t thought about this in years. Roger and Bob and – Jim and Formula Jim.”

Dean smiled a little, obviously trying to quell it. “Formula Jim?”

“Two of my friends were named Jim. One of them was very interested in science, so we called him Formula Jim to avoid confusion.” Cas smiled again. “I was very young, obviously.”

“Formula Jim, I like it.”

“I knew exactly what my room in the imaginary school looked like. Mrs. Malone.” Cas chuckled, shaking his head. “How did this all leave my head for so long? Mrs. Malone was the kindest teacher at school. When life was shit, I mean real life, I’d go to Mrs. Malone in my head and tell her my troubles, and she’d tell me – how smart and good I was, how successful I would be.” He met Dean’s gaze with a wry look. “I don’t ever recall her telling me I’d be assistant manager at a convenience store.”

Dean grinned. “You ever have a run at Mrs. Malone?”

“I told you, I was very young. But – at night I would imagine that my roommate Roger and I would lie on the same bed – fully dressed, you know – just holding each other. It helped me get to sleep. I used to wonder why that made me feel better than anything else.” Cas shook his head. “I’ll be damned. I guess I do have an imagination.”

“A good one, it sounds like.”

Cas sat silent, memories flooding through him and emotions, he wasn’t sure, some kind of sensation.

“So was your mom dead? That was the reason for Mrs. Malone?”

Dean’s mother died. The thought laid itself neatly into Cas’ head. But he hadn’t talked about himself in so long, he was feeling an almost drunken release of inhibitions. “No, she wasn’t dead. She just wasn’t present.”

“She traveled a lot?”

“No, she just wasn’t – there. Emotionally. Either her or Dad.” Cas sat back. “To this day I wonder why she and Dad had three children. It must have been clear to them after Michael that they just weren’t – interested.”

Dean narrowed his eyes as if trying to understand.

“They kept us fed and clothed, of course. Well fed and clothed. Nice place to live, we couldn’t really have any complaints. But they just didn’t want to listen to kids whining. They had a lot of activities outside the home. We – ” he chuckled – “We tormented a lot of babysitters. If we asked for something we usually got it, especially if we wanted some kind of activity outside the house, but they didn’t come to watch the activity. They’d get another parent or a taxi to take us there and back. They ate dinner in a separate room –”

“What?”

“Adults’ table and a kids’ table, you know.”

“That’s for big family gatherings!” Dean looked and sounded indignant.

“Well, at our house it was for every night. We were –”

He felt as though he’d retreated into himself, talking to himself, was only half-aware of Dean. “A few years ago I was working in an office. We’d had a couple of birthday parties before – you know, cake and everyone sings ‘Happy Birthday’ off-key, and then everyone stands around eating cake and talking until too many phones are ringing and everyone goes back to work. Mine came around, and I had to step out into the hall after the singing. One of the secretaries brought me a piece of cake and asked if I was OK. I told her it was the first birthday party I’d ever had.”

Dean shook his head very slightly, but the movement brought Cas back to the present.

“She teared up, but she also looked at me like she was understanding something, like she understood why I’m unusual.”

“Unusual?” Dean sounded like he wanted to hit someone. “How are you not royally fucked up?”

“Well, maybe I am. You don’t know.” Cas smiled a little, but Dean failed to see the humor. “My older brother, Michael, he started out badly – got into fights, too much drinking, ran away. When he joined the Army, that made all the difference. Gave him discipline, gave him a sense of mission. A family, in a way. My sister Anna, she’s younger than I am, she got pregnant at seventeen, had an abortion, started college, dropped out, ran off with a guy, got pregnant again and he dumped her. She kept the baby and she works cleaning houses. She’s on her – fifth or sixth boyfriend now, I think. We don’t keep in very good touch, any of us.”

Dean shook his head again.

“My apologies,” Cas said. “You asked about hobbies, and I gave you my childhood history. I promise it won’t happen again.”

“No, it – ” Dean leaned back, and a little of his ferocious humor was returning to his eyes. “You actually just won a prize. You’re the first person I’ve ever known that I’d rather have my background than yours.”

“Tell me.”

“No way. I don’t feel like talking about it. I feel like something enjoyable.”

“I could go for something enjoyable.” Cas was fully back in the present, looking at Dean’s chest.

Which was actually moving a little fast. He was breathing as if he were on edge, looking across the room, his eyes slightly crinkled. He looked as though he was deciding something.

Then he looked back at Cas. “Want to know what I do in my spare time?”

“Of course.”

“I tell stories.”

“You mean, you write?”

“No, I tell stories. Sometimes just to myself. Sometimes to someone else. You want to hear a story?”

“Absolutely.”

Dean stood, taking his beer, and gave a quick wave of his hand, heading for the kitchen. Cas grabbed his glass and followed.

Dean opened a door in the kitchen, flipped on a light over the staircase, and headed down. Cas followed him.

They walked into a finished basement with dark gray wall-to-wall carpet. The light was on in a small lavatory to Cas’ right. Beyond that, shelves stacked with boxes took up the rest of the wall. Across the room to the left, there was a somewhat beat-up but comfortable looking sofa facing a TV set that sat on a long set of two shelves of DVDs, and next to that was a small refrigerator. Between the TV and the sofa was a coffee table that bore a flat, lidded box and a stack of magazines. Behind the sofa, at the wall directly across from the door, was a bed with a nightstand and lamp next to it. Maybe someplace for guests to stay.

Maybe. But there were touches that disconcerted him. The bed was king-size, unusual for a guest room, with a headboard of criss-cross black metal bars. The bedspread was blood red, and so was the lampshade. In the middle of the room, backed up against a gray metal support pillar, was a plain wooden chair with two belts coiled on the seat. And on the wall to his left was a bulletin board covered with pictures of faces, most of which had big red Xs marked through them.

For a wild moment Cas thought maybe Dean really was a mad killer, and then he took a closer look at the pictures. Most of them were printed from some website, or torn from magazines and clearly ads with the text cut off. A couple of the pictures were celebrities who, Cas knew, were alive and well.

Dean, on his way to the sofa, paused and looked back at Cas.

“What – do you call this place?” Cas asked delicately.

Dean furrowed his brow. “Uh – the basement?”

“Of course,” Cas said, and sat on the sofa with Dean.

Dean put the black box from the coffee table on his lap and opened it. There were more pictures of people in it, some clearly cut from the stack of magazines on the table. One or two looked like they might have been the photos that come in new picture frames, others he couldn’t identify the source.

Dean pulled out an arty black-and-white ad of a youngish, beautifully groomed guy who looked rich and superior. His coiled hand rested against his chin, thereby showing his obviously expensive watch to best advantage. “Yeah. I’ve been wanting to do this guy for a while.”

He put the box back on the table and looked at the watch model for a couple of moments with a smile. Then he looked back up at Cas.

“OK. Once upon a – now. There’s a group of people all over the country – all over the world really, a network. We’re called hunters. We kill monsters.”

“Monsters like – ”

“You ever seen a horror movie?”

“Yes.”

“Like that.” Dean turned the picture so Cas could see it. “This guy is – was – a werewolf. And a real asshole. Most werewolves, you know, they’re innocent people who got bitten. Once they realize what they are, they’re horrified. They try all kinds of things to keep from killing when a full moon comes around. You’ve got to kill them anyway, of course, because nothing’s going to work forever, they’re gonna kill an innocent person – or turn them – someday. But those werewolves you try to make it fast and painless. This guy, though – psychopath. He uses his downtime between full moons to pick out his next victim and stalk them.”

He settled back on the sofa and smiled at Cas, the story rolling now. “He’d kidnapped a gal and was holding her prisoner somewhere until the full moon came around and he could do – whatever he was planning, make her into his mate or his next meal. Whatever it was, it wasn’t gonna happen.

“I waited for him at his condo. Really nice place, by the way. He had some expensive German beer, I put a bottle in my duffel bag for later.

“When he got home I jumped out from behind the door and threw a bag over his head. He started punching and while I was getting the cuffs on one of his wrists he pulled the bag off and went for my eyes. I used his own momentum against him and he hit the floor. I finished cuffing him, stood up, flipped him over, and stomped on his solar plexus. That gave him something to think about while I went back to the duffel bag and got the syringe. I made sure he was good and drugged, then I uncuffed him and sat him in the wheelchair I’d brought in. Put a blanket over him and took a – And then I noticed some fancy little needlepoint pillow on his sofa and put that behind his head. I thought that was a nice touch.”

Cas chuckled.

“One more thing out of the duffel bag, a white jacket that made me look like some kind of health care worker, and we were good to go. I just rolled him to the elevator and out the door. Got him all carefully sitting up in the backseat and drove – and put the wheelchair in the trunk. Drove around the corner, pushed him over and cuffed him to the metal ring bolted to the floor.”

“Um – ” Cas wasn’t sure if he should interrupt, but Dean seemed to welcome questions. “Yes?”

“Aren’t people unnerved when they see a metal ring bolted to the floor of your car?”

Dean thought for a moment. “You know, anyone in the back seat of my car, they’re either cuffed to that ring, or they’re feeling too good to worry about my auto accessories.”

Cas laughed, a little breathlessly.

“I got him to my little hideaway, way out of town, no one hears a thing that happens there. Took off his shirt and tie and jacket, then – and his fancy watch – then I chained one wrist to the wall. He came around while I was doing that, struggling. I forced him back against the wall with my body – ”

A tiny moan broke from Cas’ throat. Dean looked pleased.

“Forced his other arm up and into the shackle. He roared like – well, like a trapped wolf, and he thrashed around, but he wasn’t getting out of those chains. I got a knife I have, it has a silver blade, and just stood and watched the guy thrash around for a minute. For such a metrosexual-lookin’ dude, he was in good shape.”

“The silver – ” Cas began.

“Question?”

“Is silver especially – bothersome to werewolves even if they’re human at the time?”

Dean looked like he hadn’t anticipated that. “Good question!” He thought. “Yes.”

“Ah.”

“So after I told him he wasn’t getting out of there, I pulled off the rest of his clothes. He fought, of course, but there wasn’t a lot he could do. I got the knife, put it flat against his neck, and just ran the flat side all the way down his chest to his dick. Didn’t cut him, but it left a streak like burning all the way down.”

Cas’ eyes closed without his willing it, and he gave another broken moan.

Dean swallowed hard. “Yeah, he – that was kind of like the sound he made. Not as sexy. I told him, you tell me where the girl is and you can live as long as it takes for me to go get her. Who knows, maybe you’ll break out of those chains. But he didn’t – He said, ‘I’ll never tell you where she is. She’ll starve to death and it’ll be your fault.’ So I said, ‘Well, we’ll just have to keep that from happening,’ and I started running the knife edge down the burned skin. Then I got artistic for a while.

“He howled and yelled. I told him, ‘Now, you want to hold still for this one, don’t want to jostle my hand.’ I put the knife high up inside his leg, right next to the nut sack, and burned his thigh. He screamed and I said, ‘What do you say, we could do this all day!’” His voice had a buoyant, cheerful brutality. “‘Or you can just tell me where the girl is.’ He started struggling again, and I gotta tell you the sight of his cock wiggling around was pretty distracting. So – ”

Cas’ hand shot out and clutched Dean’s wrist. His vision was obscured somehow, and he was having a hard time catching his breath. Dean looked as if he didn’t know whether he should be alarmed.

“The belts. On the chair.” The words were floating out of Cas’ mouth without his processing them mentally. “Do you use those. For binding monsters? Or beating them?”

Dean put the picture down. “What do you think?”

“I think. Both.”

There was a moment of silence.

Then Dean said, “You don’t believe a word of it, do you?”

“I – ”

Dean jumped up, pulled Cas to his feet, and spun him. He yanked Cas’ unbuttoned shirt down to his wrists, gathering the fabric in one hand so that it pulled Cas’ wrists together. “I try to tell you the truth about my work, Detective. Life-saving work. But you don’t want to believe it, right? You want to think I’m some kind of psycho killer.”

“Turn yourself in, Winchester,” Cas said shakily. “We’ll get you the help you need.”

The remark surprised Dean, and he laughed. “Nice! But no.”

He dragged Cas to the bed, pushed him face-down onto it and pulled the shirt off Cas’ arms. Lying on top of Cas, he tied one sleeve around Cas’ wrist and stuffed the shirt through one of the gaps in the criss-cross bars of the headboard, looping it over and tying it clumsily. Then he stood.

Cas looked over his shoulder and saw Dean going to the chair, picking up the belts. A shiver ran down his spine from neck to tailbone. As Dean returned, Cas began to pick at the sleeve tied around his wrist as though he were trying to free himself.

“Oh, no,” Dean said, dropping one of the belts and using the other to bind Cas’ other wrist to the headboard. The buckle actually hurt, but that was just one in a flood of sensations – helplessness and surrender, his erection trying to gouge the mattress, his own breath pulsing warmly around his face, Dean’s weight on the skin of his back.

Dean said quickly, resting his forearms on Cas’ shoulders, “I should tell you, I don’t do the safe-word thing. You really need me to knock it off, you tell me. What kind of idiot can’t tell the difference between real and play-acting?”

Turning his head so that Dean could see his smile, Cas nodded.

“All right!” The cheerful-brutal tone was back in Dean’s voice. “Let’s get this show on the road!”

He fumbled under Cas, unfastening his pants. The feel of Dean’s hands – even though he was very familiar with it after the last twenty-four hours – was intense, and Cas shuddered and bucked. Dean stood and dragged Cas’ pants off, another rough but pleasurable sensation.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Dean bend over to pick up the second belt from the floor. Then leather cracked across his shoulder blades. He uttered only a short gasp at the shock of the blow; then the burn of pain made him grunt loudly, clenching his fists. 

Dean paused for a moment, then slapped the belt down again, and the burn redoubled. After a series of blows Cas was bellowing wordlessly, his whole body rippling from numbed wrists to ankles. Then there was another pause, and Cas heard Dean’s jeans unzip.

“Doesa matta – ” Cas managed.

Dean climbed onto Cas again, nude this time, settling himself comfortably between Cas’ buttocks, taking him over. “What was that, Detective?”

Cas tried to retain control of his mouth. “Doesn’t matter what – you do to me. It’ll all just add on – to the – to your prison term.”

“Maybe so.” Dean’s arm reached to the nightstand. He pulled open the drawer and brought out a tube of lubricant. He murmured in Cas’ ear, “But I’m going to have some – delicious memories of you when I’m in prison, Detective.”

June 23rd. A couple of hours after Cas had got to the Gas-n-Sip, Dean appeared at the door, holding a shopping bag in one hand. When he caught Cas’ eye, he jerked his head toward the outdoors and slipped away from the door.

Cas finished ringing up a customer’s purchases, asked a co-worker who was shelving stock to keep an eye on the register for a moment. Then he walked outside, looked about, and saw Dean standing around the corner of the store.

He smiled as he walked over. “I thought you were at work.”

“Dinner break.” For some reason, Dean seemed a little nervous. He thrust the shopping bag at Cas. “Before I went to work, I was in a store.”

He sounded as if he had no idea how he had materialized there. Cas gave him a small smile, took the bag and opened it.

Then he looked up at Dean. “This is for me?”

“A detective ought to have a trench coat. I figured.”

Cas pulled the coat out of the bag and put it on, smoothing the collar and lapels, then cocked his head a bit and looked at Dean.

“That works,” Dean said.

Winchester sat in the straight wooden chair, his wrists bound behind him with a belt. That was harder to do than the detective had expected, but a lot of looping and cross-looping had effectively bound the killer, who nonetheless twisted his hands as if he thought he’d get free.

The detective paced in front of him, looking down at him coldly.

“Pretty unconstitutional,” Winchester said, with a smile as cruel as the detective’s eyes.

“You think you deserve the protection of the law?”

“I think when I get out of this restraint, the law isn’t going to protect you at all.”

“Ah. Well, I’ll scream in terror later.” The detective unbuttoned Winchester’s shirt. “Right now, talk, Winchester. It would be a shame to scar up that handsome chest of yours.”

He pulled a screwdriver out of the pocket of his trench coat, pushed a corner of the head to the base of Winchester’s throat, and ran it downward, leaving a red streak to the waistband.

Winchester closed his eyes with a smiling grimace and a grunt of pain. When the detective pulled the screwdriver back Winchester opened his eyes, but kept the smile. “Oh, come on, Detective. Feel me up a little more.”

“I’ll feel you up with your own knife. Don’t be stupid, Winchester. Talk.”

Winchester rolled his eyes. “This is about Lawson, isn’t it?”

The detective looked for a moment like he hadn’t heard the name before, but recovered quickly. “And so many others. But let’s start with Lawson.”

Winchester tried to shrug, and winced. “Hunters, like I said, we’re a network. If you’re dealing with a werewolf in Missoula when you hear about a poltergeist in Lincoln, Nebraska, you know a hunter who knows a hunter in Omaha who can take care of the Lincoln job. Couple weeks ago, I got a call from a hunter in Kansas City. He’d just got a call from a hunter in Bangor who just got a call from her sister in Boise.”

The detective’s voice was wry. “Saying that Lawson was a poltergeist?”

“Saying that Lawson molested her kid.”

Cas started a bit. Dean looked at him as if waiting for a reaction, then proceeded. “I could give you details, but you don’t want to hear them any more than I did. Point is, Lawson’s got a lot of money. He knows where a lot of bodies are buried. All of a sudden the cops don’t have enough convincing evidence to make a case, and the parents don’t want to go to the press.”

“Which is ironically good for them, since they’ll be the major suspects in Lawson’s murder.”

“You ought to read the police reports more carefully, Detective. Hunting is as much logistics as killing. The girl’s mom wins a friends ’n’ family dinner for eight at the dad’s favorite restaurant. Big table with a big sign in the middle of the place, ‘Idaho Dining Bureau Winners!’ Photographer comes in halfway through and gets pictures of everyone. Lots of corroboration of everyone’s location, while Lawson’s having a really bad night twenty minutes away.”

“Do you – So – ” The detective seemed a bit confused, then looked down at Winchester with a gotcha look. “How did you pay for the dinner? And the photographer?”

“Mick Richards paid for it with his personal credit card. He’s the Marketing VP of the Idaho Dining Bureau.”

“The Idaho Dining Bureau doesn’t exist.”

“That’s OK, neither does Mick Richards.” Winchester gave a little self-satisfied nod. “The credit card company will figure that out eventually.”

“So you – ”

Cas crouched in front of Dean, looking into his eyes. “So you killed a human being? I thought you only killed monsters.”

“What would you call a child raper?”

There was a moment’s silence.

Then Cas said, “Tell me what you did to him.”

July 4th. “He does freelance computer trouble-shooting. He’s a rent-a-geek type. He could probably work in any big IT company he wanted to, but he likes makin’ his own schedule.”

Cas just nodded. Ever since they’d pulled into Idaho Falls, Dean had been talking energetically – about the weather, his co-workers, his brother. This was very unusual.

“I think he met Sarah when he was out with some buddies one time. They’ll have to tell you about that. I’ve only met her once, but she seems like a nice girl. Anyway – ” with a half-smile – “willing to put up with Sam’s shit. So that’s good.”

They turned a corner in the residential neighborhood, then stopped in front of a light green house with blinds drawn over all of the windows and an overgrown lawn. Although there was a two-car garage, a car was parked in the driveway, and as Dean pulled up, Cas saw why: Some previous accident had partly crumpled the frame of the garage door on one side, and there was obviously no way to open it.

Dean jumped out of the car, unlocking the back doors. “I’ll bring in the fireworks, you bring in the beer.”

Dean had bought the fireworks the previous weekend on a day trip across the border to Wyoming, where it was legal to sell them. It was absolutely not legal in Idaho to buy them or set them off, but, Dean promised Cas, on the Fourth of July in Sam’s neighborhood, no one cared.

They trudged through the weedy grass, up on to the front stoop, and Dean tried the door handle. It was locked. Shifting the box of fireworks to his hip, Dean knocked on the door with his right hand. “Hey, Sam! The party’s here!”

No response. Dean pushed the doorbell, and they heard it ring inside, but still no one came to the door. 

Dean gave a little laugh. “Maybe he’s getting’ busy with Sarah,” he said, but Cas knew Dean well enough by now to know that he was really bothered. Dean pounded hard on the door with the side of his fist and yelled, “Yo, Sam! You got visitors!”

The door opened and the lanky guy from the Meg Heller photo appeared behind the screen door. He was taller than Cas would have guessed from the picture, but he had the same slightly stupid smile. He rubbed his eyes with one hand while he opened the screen door with the other. “Um, Dean. Hi. What brings you here?”

By this time Dean’s face had solidified into expressionlessness. “What brings us here? Fourth of July? Grilling? Fireworks?”

“Oh, man, I’m sorry.” Sam pushed the screen door wide open and Cas stepped around it, following Dean inside. “I’ve been busy. Forgot all about it. Hey, you must be Cas. Let me take that.” He relieved Cas of the six-pack. “I’ll put these in the refrigerator. Oh. Want one to start with?”

“Yes,” Dean said abruptly. Cas shook his head. Sam put the two bottles on a cluttered coffee table and went through the kitchen entry.

Dean took one of the bottles, dropped down on a sofa, and focused on opening the bottle and taking a long drink. Cas looked around. Besides the coffee table and sofa, there were two armchairs – all good furniture, despite the deep stain on one of the chairs. Bookshelves held a wide variety of items – daunting-looking computer science textbooks, history, astronomy, philosophy, D.H. Lawrence and Doris Kearns Goodwin coexisting peacefully, a small globe, a bowl of unpolished rock specimens, and four empty beer cans. The TV remote control was on the floor in front of the top-of-the-line TV set, and another beer can sat on top of one of the speakers. 

Sam came back into the room, scooped up his beer and dropped into the chair closest to Dean. “So I was thinking, why don’t we just go out to dinner? We won’t want to get started on the fireworks until sunset anyway. And cleaning the grill is a hassle.”

Dean smiled at Sam with an edge of sadness. “You have no food in the house at all, do you?”

“Pickles? I’m sorry. Like I said, I’ve been busy.”

Dean nodded. “Want to call Sarah, see if she’s available to come over?”

“Oh.” Sam made a vague gesture. “Didn’t work out.”

“Sorry, man.”

“Yeah, well. You know.”

Dean took another long drink of beer, then put the bottle down and jumped to his feet. “I’m going to a take-out place, bring us all back some ribs,” he announced. “No, you sit down, Cas. It’s a one-man job.”

He was out the door even before Cas had settled into the other chair.

Sam shook his head. “I’m sorry. Makin’ a bad first impression.”

“Not at all. I’m very impressed by your library.”

Sam smiled a little. “Yeah, I go through reading phases. When I was in high school I went through – ”

Dean’s eight-cylinder Impala started outside with a roar.

Sam’s eyebrows drew together for a moment, then he smiled. “That car.”

“Dean talks about it as if it were beyond value – ”

“Tell me about it.”

“— but it must actually be very valuable. How did he afford it?”

“Should’ve seen it when he got it in high school.” Sam opened a beer, still smiling. “It was a true rust bucket, barely functional. Dean rebuilt it from the wheels up. He put every spare penny he had into it, and every spare minute.”

“I’m surprised he didn’t focus more on sports of some kind.”

A quick shadow went over Sam’s face. Then he said, “No, he – he stayed at home. With the car.” The shadow left as Sam raised his eyebrows. “And it provided a good excuse, you know. For not dating, not dating girls. ‘I just blew my bank account on a new fender.’ ‘I gotta stay home and replace the oil pump.’ You would not believe the number of girls we had calling the house.”

“Yes,” Cas said, “I would.”

Sam seemed to focus on Cas. “Oh. Of course.”

He smiled and took another drink.

“So when did he get the car finished?”

There was a moment, as if Sam had to look inside himself for the answer. Then he said, “Right after my sixteenth birthday. Dean lived at home after he graduated, got a job and helped Dad with home repairs, the yard and stuff. But you can only do that so long. He said he’d been waiting for years to see what that car could do, and he took off.”

“Where did he go?”

Sam looked a little surprised. “Well, here, eventually. We lived in Lawrence, Kansas originally.”

“Oh, I didn’t – Is that where the University of Kansas is?”

“Yeah.”

And that explained the Facebook post – hometown loyalty, even if Dean had never attended the university.

Sam took another drink of beer. “So how did you two meet?”

Fortunately Cas had foreseen the question and had literally rehearsed an explanation that didn’t involve magazine theft or anonymous sex near railroad tracks. “I’m an assistant manager of a convenience store that he patronizes pretty regularly. We got to talking, and then we got to dating.”

“Well, maybe I shouldn’t rat him out, but Dean says great things about you.”

“Thank you. He tells me that you’re very intelligent.”

Sam laughed, almost bitterly it seemed. “He says that to everyone. Like there’s only one bright person in the family.”

“I’ve noticed that Dean thinks fast.”

“Yeah, he had to.” Sam took another drink, a deep one.

“Why?”

Sam waved a hand carelessly. “Oh, just – you know. His energy level is too high for sitting in a classroom, but I wouldn’t want to try out-thinking Dean in a real-world application.”

It didn’t seem to Cas like that really answered his question, but before he could pursue it Sam lurched to his feet. “Better get the crap off the picnic table. Want to eat outside?”

“Sounds good. First, where’s your bathroom?”

The bathroom was unclean, and smelled. Cas cleared out as quickly as possible and went to the kitchen, where Sam had been headed. Through the window he saw Sam sitting at a picnic table that had several more beer cans scattered on it, as well as a pile of newspapers under the holder of a burned-out citronella candle. A garden hose was looped over Sam’s broad shoulder and long arm, but he’d taken a pause to finish the beer bottle.

Cas helped Sam to locate a plastic picnic table spread and wash the only eating utensils in the place, which were in the sink. Sam found a clean dishrag, washed the knives and forks in water so hot it steamed coming out of the faucet, soaped them thoroughly and rinsed them in the same hot water, giving them to Cas to dry. Obviously he knew how to clean; obviously he was willing to do it for other people.

They talked the whole time about the news and politics, music they liked. Sam’s conversation was witty and informed. And he drank, slowly but steadily, the whole time.

Dean came back bearing the promised ribs, with sides of cole slaw, beans, and rolls. He’d also been to a grocery store, and had milk, bread, cold cuts, cereal, apples, and a cherry pie. He put them away in Sam’s kitchen, with the sole comment that after the ribs were gone, nobody better get between him and the pie.

He’d also bought a pack of cigarettes. While Sam set the food on the table outside, Dean lit one in the kitchen and Cas looked at him with concern.

“Don’t start with me, Grandma,” Dean said, putting a cheap lighter in his pocket.

Cas moved over to him, took his arm, and murmured in his ear, “Just keep in mind, Winchester: Someone in your line of work needs to preserve his night vision.”

Dean gave a one-sided smile. “I’ll take it easy.”

Cas clapped him on the arm and they headed outdoors.

During dinner they talked about sports and TV shows. Dean talked about customers at the home construction store in Idaho Falls where he worked, and Sam told funny stories about technologically hapless clients.

After dinner they moved around to the driveway, Sam moving his car to the street so that the driveway was open, Dean moving his car further down the block so it would be safe. Cas, who’d restricted himself to one beer and a lot of ice water, took charge of the fireworks. Dean acted disgruntled, but Cas knew he saw the logic. As Cas set off rockets and a fountain, though, Dean couldn’t resist lighting a couple of strings of firecrackers, enjoying it as they flashed and popped on the driveway.

Cas stood at the end of the driveway to light the fireworks, backing up to the garage door to watch the result, where Dean was sitting in a lawn chair and Sam was leaning against a porch railing. One red-white-and-blue burst was especially spectacular, and Cas was smiling up at it when there was a scrape and rush behind him.

Startled, he looked around to see Dean strike Sam’s hand violently. A lit string of firecrackers exploded terrifyingly close, in the air, sending up more sparks and bangs as it hit the grass.

Sam looked surprised, in a fuzzy way. “Man. Guess I got distracted by the – ”

“I guess you’re trying to kill yourself!” Dean barked. “I guess once wasn’t enough?”

Sam looked at once confused and wounded. “You were lighting firecrackers too. I don’t accuse you – ”

“I’m paying attention. I’m not staring up at fireworks while a firecracker fuse burns down in my hand,” Dean snarled. “You could’ve lost a hand, you could’ve blown a hole in your gut. What were you thinking about?”

And Sam, a couple of inches taller than Dean, ducked his head and rounded his shoulders as if he were being tormented by the school bully. “I’m sorry, Dean. I’m really sorry.”

Dean stepped back and sighed, looking as if he regretted his outburst.

There was a bucket of water in which they’d been tossing the used fireworks. Cas poured it over the sullenly smoldering grass where the firecracker had landed, putting all the burnt husks back in the wet bucket and grinding the grass under the sole of his shoe.

Dean took his brother’s shoulders and looked in his eyes. “You don’t have to apologize to me, Sam. I just wish – I want you to take better care of yourself. Just take some care of yourself.”

“I will, Dean. I’m sorry. I will.”

Cas looked back and forth between them. Dean shook his head a bit. “All right, I’ll fill that bucket back up and we’ll finish off the show. No more firecrackers. We’ll leave the excitement to our designated – fireworks igniter.”

“Pyrotechnician,” Sam said. “I’ll fill the bucket, you relax. Back out in a moment.”

There was a moment of silence. Then Cas said, moving over to Dean, “Very impressive. You saved him from serious injury.”

Dean sounded tired. “You think I did him any favors?”

“Yes. Whatever his problems, it wouldn’t help him to solve them if he were an amputee.”

Dean nodded absently.

At about 11:00 Cas turned off the TV while Dean helped Sam, who’d been dozing in an armchair, back to his bedroom. Afterward they turned out the lights, locked the door behind them, and started walking to the car. Cas might have offered to drive, but he knew that being behind the wheel of the Impala was Dean’s best therapy.

“I want to ask a personal question, but I don’t want to be intrusive,” Cas said quietly as the car floated through the darkness.

Dean thought about it for a moment. Then he said, with a quick smile, “Well, it’s not like we haven’t been pretty personal with each other.”

“You said to Sam, you said something like, ‘You tried to kill yourself, wasn’t once enough?’ How – When was that?”

Dean sighed deeply. “Yeah, you told me about yourself, I guess I ought to – Ours is faster. Mm, seven words. The old man was a mean drunk.”

Then he shook his head. “But not all the time. That was the killer. He’d go through stages where he really tried. His dad would get drunk and knock him and his mom around, and he hated being like that, but – ”

“But it was the only model for fatherhood that he had.”

“Exactly. Mom died when Sam was less than a year old – cancer – and he just had no idea how to deal with us. A baby and a rambunctious five-year-old. He’d do his best for awhile, then he’d get drunk and pissed off. At first he just took it out on the furniture and the walls, and that was pretty terrifying. Don’t want to sound like a wimp.”

“You were five.”

“Yeah. I remember the first time he hit me, I was eight and I was mouthing off to him. He apologized afterward, and I’m sure he did feel lousy.”

“But not lousy enough to quit drinking.”

“He settled down for a pretty long time – at least it seemed like a pretty long time for a kid. And then he got drunk again. And was sorry again, and then drunk and mean again.

“After awhile I got pretty good at reading Dad, learning when to stay out of the way and be quiet. But Sam was so much younger. Dad would be – sleeping, in front of the TV, Sam would run up and wake him to tell him a riddle he heard in school. Or – oh my God – ” Dean shook his head. “Sam was so much smarter than everyone else in his grade, he’d ask Dad for help with his homework and then not understand when Dad didn’t get the math textbook right off. ‘Daddy, don’t you know that?’ Stupid kid. I mean, he figured it out eventually, like me, how to stay quiet, but there was something about him – It was like he wanted to challenge Dad. So I wound up doing the thing where I’d see that Sam was getting on Dad’s nerves, I’d jump in and be even more obnoxious so he’d take it out on me.”

Cas made a little sound, involuntary.

“Pretty dumb, I know,” Dean said, although that wasn’t what Cas had meant at all. “I don’t think Sam realized what I was doing for years. He was still a kid when I was a teenager.

“When I was sixteen, I bought my baby.” Dean smiled and patted the steering wheel affectionately. “Fixing her up gave me a reason to stay home, keep an eye on Sam. We got so we could whip up pretty good dinners. Dad was actually a pretty good cook too, when he was sober. Or we’d go out – ”

He grinned suddenly. “Here’s a good memory. Sam’s eighth birthday. We went out to a restaurant, nothing fancy of course, but the staff had confetti on the table and after dinner they brought out a cupcake with a candle in it and sang ‘Happy Birthday.’ Dad was singing along, and Sam just looked so happy.”

There was silence as Dean’s grin faded.

“Anyway, Sam went through a growth spurt, got smart about handling Dad, got more independent. I went to work after graduation, finished the car, saved some money. Right after Sam turned sixteen I hit the road, traveling all over, thinking to myself I wasn’t stopping until my money ran out.”

Cas smiled. “And that was in Rexburg?”

“Idaho Falls, actually. I saw a McDonald’s sign and while I was driving there to get some fries, I saw a sign that they were hiring at the big box store. Got a job, lived in the car for a few weeks, got an apartment.

“I was talkin’ to Sam one night about college, he wasn’t sure what route he wanted to take, and I said, they’ve got a U of I campus here in Idaho Falls, come take some classes and get some ideas, we’ll rock the place all weekend. So he came on out – got a scholarship of course – ”

It was as if Dean wanted the story to end there. After several moments he sighed and continued. “You know, by sophomore year he was hitting the beer pretty hard on weekends, but I figured – he’s on his own for the first time, but he won’t want to turn into Dad. And he didn’t. Not really. It’s like – it’s like we split Dad between us. I got the violence. Sam got the alcoholism.”

“I don’t think you’re violent.”

Dean shot him a sideways look. “Uh, I know you were there last night.”

Cas shrugged. “Sexual game-playing is different.”

“God, I hope so. ’Cause there are times when I want – Well. Cut to the chase.

“His sophomore year, Sam met this girl, Jess. They – well, they started out as drinking buddies, but they also had a lot in common – both smart, same sense of humor, same interests. By middle of junior year they’d both tried to quit drinking together and fallen off the wagon together a couple of times. 

“Sam was doing freelance IT work to help pay the bills, and he started getting a lot of referrals. After junior year he quit college. He said, why go to classes when he was already earning a good living, which was bullshit. Sam always wanted an education in all kinds of subjects. But by then he didn’t want to get out of bed with a hangover to make a nine o’clock class. I was fighting about it with him all the time, so he got his own place.

“Sam took Jess to his house one night to watch a movie or something, and they were drinking. They had a fight, Sam can’t even remember what it was about. She told him to drive her back to the dorm and he said no, he’d had too much to drink, he’d just sleep on the couch and she could take the bed, and she yelled at him, and he tossed his car key at her and told her to drive herself home.”

Cas closed his eyes. “She was in a crash.”

“Sam called me from the hospital, I’ve never heard him sound like that. I got there and she was so bashed up, tubes sticking out of her, I almost didn’t recognize her. But she actually rallied. She and Sam got to have a talk, thank God. After a couple of days, they were talking about starting her on physical therapy. Then she threw a clot and died. Just like that.

“When the cops first asked him about it, Sam told them that Jess just took his car key. After she died, he wanted to go and tell them the full thing, but I talked him out of it. He might get charged with – some kind of negligence, I don’t know, her folks might sue him – I managed to keep him from telling anyone. Maybe that was a mistake.”

“You think Sam wants to be punished for his role in her death.”

They were off the highway by then, and Dean pulled up at a stoplight. He exhaled a long breath.

“He tried to hang himself. But he was so drunk he fucked it up, wrenched the hell out of his neck. I went by to check on him and found him lying on the floor moaning. He still takes pain pills sometimes, when it gets bad.”

Cas looked over at Dean. “You’ve been to hell and back.”

“Well, you know, after that I hauled his ass to rehab, and it stuck for a few years. He’d never admit this, but it seemed to lighten his load, a little, when Dad died. It was like having a whole new version of my brother. Sam three point oh. Not a scared little kid, not a smart-aleck who smelled like beer, but a – you know, a real brother. Then a couple years ago he started – slippin’ away again – And I really need to not talk about this anymore.”

“Thank you, though. For telling me.”

Dean made a face. “Listen, would you mind if I dropped you off at your place tonight?”

Cas hesitated. “I don’t mind. I’d rather be with you. Unless you really don’t want that.”

Dean considered. “I’m not gonna be good company.”

“I don’t require company. I’m tired.”

Dean shut his eyes for a moment, then nodded. “Yeah, OK. Stay over. Thanks.”

They turned a corner in Dean’s neighborhood. Up ahead, on the horizon, a brilliant gold burst decorated the sky, turning scarlet as it fell.

August 12th. Cas was beginning to find his detective role constraining. While Dean gave vent to more and more violent fantasies, Cas was primarily acting as a check and rein on him. It made Cas feel like the girl in the relationship, and their actual sex life was far more varied than that.

He was thinking about it as Dean drove to a diner for lunch on a day they both had off. He intended to bring it up that night, but he startled himself by saying, as they were walking through the parking lot, “I want to make a change-up, if you don’t have a problem with it.”

Dean stopped. “What kind of change-up?”

Cas said cheerfully, “I want to become a hunter.”

Dean looked surprised, then a little taken aback. Then a smile spread over his face. “Good man goes dark side. Yeah, that could be interesting. You know, you’ll have to come up with stories.”

“I can do that.”

“And – you’re gonna keep the coat, right?”

“I would never give up this coat.”

Dean smiled again, took a step or two, stopped again and looked around to see if anyone was near enough to hear. “And you’re gonna have to pass a test. So I know I can trust you.”

“That makes sense.”

Cas moved up the two steps and opened the diner door for Dean.

Cas lay on his back, nude, his wrists tied by belts to the basement bed’s headboard.

Dean, also nude, stood beside the bed, smoking. “You sure you’re up for this?”

“Bring it on.”

Dean sat beside Cas’ knees and pulled one of them up, enfolding the bent leg with his arm, keeping it in place. Then he pressed the cigarette to Cas’ hip.

Flashingly Cas thought, Odd, it doesn’t hurt – And then it did, searing pain. His body tried to shudder away involuntarily, he groaned through clenched teeth as he threw his wrists against the leather straps.

Dean put out the cigarette in an ashtray on the nightstand. Cas closed his eyes, gasping, satiated with sensation. Then Dean climbed over Cas, lying on top of him.

“If you decide to go back to your cop buddies, if you tell them where to find me, I’ll tell them about all the times I ‘eluded’ you after we spent some time together. I’ll tell them about that brand and exactly how you got it. And as a cop, you’ll be a lot worse off in prison than I will.”

“I won’t betray you,” Cas said hoarsely. “I’m with you. I’m yours.”

And if he didn’t want to be the girl, that was a dumb thing to say.

But Dean, reaching to free Cas’ hands, whispered, “I’m yours too.”

August 18th. “I held the knife in front of his eye,” Cas said, taking off his shoes and socks and putting them under the coffee table. “By that time I think he was convinced, but I made it very clear. ‘We’re tired of assholes murdering people and walking away. We’re tired of troglodytes thinking they’re smarter than the law.’”

Dean snorted, pulling off his T-shirt. He was sitting on the basement sofa next to Cas. “He even know what a troglodyte is?”

“He got the general idea. I told him, ‘You’re going to pay for murdering your business partner. That’s not in question. The only question is, where’s the body? The widow deserves closure. And if you’re in prison you’re going to find it very necessary to have two good eyes.’”

“But I bet he needed more persuading.”

“I stabbed him through the thigh.”

“Ow,” Dean said with admiration.

Cas stood up, shedding his coat. “So he finally talked, and I called you for confirmation.”

Dean raised his eyebrows a bit at being brought into the story, but seized his cue. “The body was right where Edwards said it was, wrapped in plastic and walled up. He was all shot to hell. Either Edwards wanted his associate to suffer a lot before he died, or he’s just an unbelievably shitty shot.”

“Hm,” Cas said. His expression was cold as he sat down again. “Well, I told him, ‘You told me the truth, that was smart.’ He saw the way the knife was shifting in my hand and he yelled, ‘You’re a cop, you can’t kill me!’ And I said, ‘Oh, did the badge fool you? I’m not in law enforcement any more, in fact – ’” He smiled in a way that was scary combined with his uncaring eyes – “‘I’m on the run from them.’ Edwards said, ‘You said you’d send me to prison!’ And I said, ‘No, I said you’ll need your eyes if you go to prison. But you won’t.’ And I stabbed him, right under the breastbone. He looked so surprised.”

The corners of Dean’s mouth twitched upward.

“I felt the blade jam and scrape against his ribs. I turned it and it went in up to the hilt. He tried to scream. I stepped to one side – didn’t want to get blood spray on the coat – and pulled the knife out.”

“Real gusher?”

“Walls, floors, even a little on the ceiling. If anyone was using that warehouse for anything, I’ve have just given someone a really messy job.”

“Nice,” Dean said. “Nice work. But next time, draw it out a little more. These assholes and monsters – they don’t mind giving their victims a slow death. You shouldn’t mind giving them one.”

Cas smiled again, standing and pulling off his belt. “I’ll bear that in mind. In the meantime, stand behind the sofa, Winchester.”

August 20th. Cas had just locked the door of the Gas-n-Sip when his phone rang. He looked at the display quickly, smiling as he took the call. “Dean?”

“Cas? Have you closed up yet?”

And with those six syllables, he knew something was very wrong. “Just about to. What happened?”

“It’s Sam. He wrecked his car. It’s – It doesn’t look like he’ll be too bad, the doctors say. No permanent damage. They don’t think.”

“Where are you?”

“Eastern Idaho Med Center.”

“I’m on my way.”

“You know, you don’t have to – ”

“I’m on my way,” Cas said firmly, and disconnected.

Half an hour later he walked into Sam’s room. Hospital rooms always seemed to him too well lit for sleeping, but Sam was completely out, probably helped by one of the IV bags to which he was attached. His face was red and abraded from the airbag, his neck was in a supportive collar.

Dean was sitting in a chair by the bed, elbows on his knees, hands hanging between his legs. He turned his head a bit when Cas came in, but didn’t look up at him.

“I give up, Cas,” he said dully. “I fucking give up.”

Cas looked around the curtain, where a middle-aged man was snoring gently, took the guest chair from that side and sat by Dean.

“What happened?”

Dean shrugged. “Before the crash? We don’t really know. My guess is, he was heading home from a bar. The cops said he was doing 65 miles an hour down 17th Street, hit the curb, lost control, spun and smashed the passenger side of the car into a lamppost. Thank God, no passengers. It was late but there was still some traffic, and a couple people called it in. The cops said when they got there Sam smelled like alcohol, but – his seatbelt was fastened. ’Cause you know, safety first.”

Cas shook his head but stayed quiet, watching Dean.

“I feel like I just went six rounds with Holyfield. I’m not going to abandon the car here. But I don’t think I can drive it home.”

Cas thought for a moment.

Then he said, “I saw a motel a few blocks from here when I was driving in. I’ll call and make sure they have a room, then I’ll drive you over there and we’ll spend the night. In the morning you can check on Sam, get the car, and see if you want to go to work or not.”

After a moment Dean nodded. “Sounds good. I can drive to the motel, though. I can do a few blocks.”

Cas found the motel on his phone, found out that they did have an available room, and conveyed that to Dean.

“OK,” Dean said. “Good. Here we go.”

He sat still, and Cas waited.

August 21st. As Dean had said, Sam’s condition could have been much worse. He had a broken rib and sprained muscles. The major problem was the exacerbation of his old neck injury. Even with hospital pain-killers, he was suffering.

Cas listened quietly as Sam expressed his remorse to Dean, his penitence. Dean nodded without speaking. Sam said he intended to go back to rehab as soon as his neck quit hurting him so badly. Dean said he thought that would be a good idea.

Then he stood. “I’ve got to get to work, Sam. I’ll come by over my dinner break, see if there’s anything you need.”

“Thanks, Dean. And Cas – thanks for helping him.”

“I’m happy to. I’d be happy to do anything I can for you too,” Cas said. “Do you have my number?”

Sam didn’t, and Cas rummaged around for a scrap of paper on which to write it.

“You could just put it in my phone,” Sam said, wincing as he tried to turn his head to look for it.

“No, he can’t,” Dean said. “It’s smashed.”

Sam closed his eyes. “Serve me right.”

Cas put the hospital’s room phone closer to Sam, along with his own number.

“I’ll see you later, Sam,” Dean said. “Get some sleep.”

He and Cas left together. Dean didn’t say anything as they walked down the hall, rode an elevator, and left the building.

“He’s planning to go back to rehab,” Cas finally said. “You said that helped him last time.”

“It did. And if he does go again, that’ll be great. But I’m not going to do what I did last time, nag him and drag him. If he goes, great.”

They reached Cas’ car; the Impala was parked a few spaces down. “I’m going to go and see Sam after work, so I’ll probably be home about 10:30 or 11,” Dean said. “Want to come over after closing? We’ll watch some TV, just relax.”

“That sounds like a good idea.”

And it would have been, if Dean had been capable of relaxation. He paced as they watched ESPN – or as Cas watched it. He went to the kitchen and got something to eat. He left it unfinished on a TV tray and paced some more. He smoked. Cas had been tired after work anyway, and he was finding it exhausting just to be in the same room with Dean.

Finally Dean said, “You know what? Let’s go out somewhere.”

Cas drew a breath. “Since the option to that is that I knock you unconscious with this lamp, yes, let’s go out somewhere.”

Apparently, “Let’s go out somewhere” was Deanspeak for “Let’s get on the highway and floor the accelerator.” Staring stoically out the windshield, Cas didn’t even wonder why he hadn’t simply gone to bed; it was because he didn’t want Dean to be wandering around by himself in his present mood.

Somewhere between Rexburg and Idaho Falls Dean slowed and took an exit that curled around to a closed restaurant, a closed gas station, and an open bar. It was an island of light in the highway darkness. Only a few cars were parked around it, and the Impala joined them.

It was a small place, a front room with two big TVs and a few booths besides the barstools, and a pool room behind that. A guy sitting at one end of the bar made loud ongoing commentary about a classic football game on the TV; another guy at the bar laughed or responded occasionally, although much more quietly; a third guy silently shifted his attention between the game and his phone. There was a young couple having beer and peanuts in one booth, and a guy in shirtsleeves and loosened tie with a laptop open on the table in front of him in another booth.

“Grab a booth for us,” Dean said. “What are you in the mood for?”

Cas quirked a smile, which Dean returned. “Beer.” 

Dean got a beer for Cas and Jack Daniels for himself from the bartender, a middle-aged pleasant-faced woman wearing an Idaho U Vandals cap over her short dark hair. The guy giving commentary at the end of the bar cast a look at Cas as he settled in a booth, then looked back sourly at Dean.

The drinks paid for, Dean carried them back to the booth. He shot quick frequent glances at the nearest TV, sipping his drink, tapping his hand on the table.

“You haven’t really said how Sam was doing when you went by to see him after work,” Cas said as Mr. Play-by-Play from the bar headed to the restroom. “I know on your dinner break he was sleeping again.”

“Oh, he was awake when I went by at nine.”

It was like Dean had begun a longer speech and stopped it suddenly. He took another drink and looked at TV.

“And?”

“And.” Dean sighed, looked back at Cas. “I suck as a brother.”

“You’re a great brother. What are you talking about?”

“I can’t get past being mad at him. I can’t stop – ” Dean’s gaze fled Cas’ for a moment – “I can’t stop thinking he’d be better off if – ”

After a moment, Cas said, “If what? He had a different brother? You are not his problem, Dean. When he is willing to use your assistance because he’s determined to get sober, you’re going to be of great help to him. Until then – ” Cas lifted his hands and let them drop – “there’s nothing you can do. Or let me put it this way – you’ve done everything you can do.”

“Maybe.”

“No ‘maybe’ about it. And don’t kick yourself for being angry. Anyone would be, and you’ll be over it soon.”

“Hope so.” Dean took another drink. “He’s going to be discharged tomorrow, and I’m gonna have him stay with me for a week or so.”

“That’s a good idea.”

“So no story hour for a week.” Dean looked sadly at his drink. “And no booze.”

“It’ll give us time to recharge our imaginations. I’ll just stay at my place, maybe come by a couple of hours before work or on my days off to see if there’s anything I can do to help out.”

Dean looked a little annoyed. “I don’t think we need to be that celibate. It’s not like Sam doesn’t know – about us.”

“Oh, I’m sure Sam knows about you. I’m sure the whole town knows about you two.”

Cas started and looked around, and now he saw why Dean’s expression had just changed. Mr. Play-by-Play was standing just behind Cas, and moved closer to Dean as he said, “Why don’t you just go out and suck cock in the middle of the highway, that way everyone’ll know.”

“You are correct,” Cas said calmly. “We’re gay. Congratulations on your perception. Goodnight.”

“I’m not goin’ anywhere. You guys are the ones – ”

“Lee.” The bartender was next to the drunk, one hand on his arm. “You need to stop bothering these people.”

“I’m sick of ’em, Kate,” the drunk said, and Cas cast a quick look at Dean, concerned that he might be getting angry. What he saw actually unnerved him more: Dean was staring into middle distance, apparently at nothing, and he was smiling. “I’m sick of ’em parading around and gettin’ married, jamming their – ”

“No one’s parading in here, Lee,” Kate said firmly. “Now you’re gonna sit down and stop bothering these people, or you’re gonna leave. One or the other.”

“Or we could take it outside,” Dean said softly, still smiling.

“You take it – ”

“Sir, please let me – ” Kate said to Dean.

“You take it outside,” Lee continued, shaking Kate off and waving at Cas, “and stick it in your prissy little bitch there.”

“All right,” Kate had her phone in her hand, “Lee, if I’ve got to call – ”

Dean’s fist lashed out and struck Lee in the gut. Lee doubled over, staggering and knocking Kate off balance. Cas jumped up but she kept her footing, talking on the phone, as Dean knocked Lee to the floor and dropped down beside him. Then his knife was at Lee’s eye.

Lee froze. Kate looked around the bar. “Everybody into the pool room. Mark? Clear ’em out of here?”

The silent man at the bar, apparently a well known regular, jumped up and ushered fellow customers into the other room. Cas was on the floor near Lee’s head, and Lee looked up at him with desperation, his contempt for Cas apparently quite gone. Kate said to Dean, “I just called the police. You don’t want to do anything stupid that ends up with you in prison.”

Gently, with both hands, Cas gripped Dean’s wrist, trying as best he could to keep his arm between the knife and Lee’s face. He desperately wanted to say Dean’s name, but some stupid idea of not leaving clues stopped him. “Look at me,” he said compellingly. “Look. At me.”

Reluctantly, Dean met Cas’ gaze; jerked his arm upward, away from Lee’s face and out of Cas’ grip; leaped to his feet, sheathing the knife, and headed to the door.

Cas stood, looked at Kate with no idea of what to say, and followed him.

The Impala roared out of the parking lot and raced down the ramp to northbound Highway 20, heading back to Rexburg. Dean laughed uproariously. “That was great!”

Cas shook his head.

“OK, not for you. I’m sorry. But God, I needed that!”

A Sheriff’s Department car went by headed southbound, its lights flashing. “Suppose they’ll be looking for us?” Dean asked, smiling.

“I don’t know. But if they do, thank goodness we’re driving such an inconspicuous car.”

Dean laughed, then glanced over. “Come on, Cas, you can’t fool me. You thought that was fun.”

“It was – exciting,” Cas admitted, “but that kind of – ”

He started as Dean’s hand clapped between his legs and squeezed. “Hell yeah, you thought it was exciting,” he chuckled, putting his hand back on the steering wheel.

“But,” Cas continued stubbornly, “that kind of excitement won’t do us much good if we’re in prison.”

“You wouldn’t be in prison. You didn’t do anything.”

“Wonderful. We can have story hour through Plexiglas for a couple of years.”

“He’s an asshole, Cas. He deserved a good scare. He deserved more than that.”

“I’m just saying, when you have that – that kind of energy, it makes more sense to bring it to me than to an asshole in a bar.”

Dean laughed. “Oh, don’t worry. I’ve got plenty of energy left for you.”

August 22nd. And so, besides being exhausted and apprehensive the next day, Cas dealt with the dull throb of multiple bruises and other sore spots. He was standing at the register, fantasizing pleasurably about what he would do to Dean once Sam was in rehab, when the door opened and two Rexburg policemen walked in.

Cas recognized the officers’ faces, though not their names. The normal-cheerful schtick kicked in perfectly. “Hello. Hi,” he said, greeting each person who walked in, as he’d been taught in training.

One of the officers walked over to the register. Cas had to remember to keep breathing.

“Give me the lowdown,” the officer said quietly. “How old is the coffee, really?”

Cas’ chuckle substituted for a hysterical whoop of relieved laughter. “I made it myself fifteen minutes ago.”

“Good enough,” the officer said with a smile, and headed for the coffee machine.

After they’d left, Cas called Dean, who sounded positively chipper. “Movin’ any faster now than you were this morning?”

“We’ll discuss that extensively in a week or so.”

“It’s great when your voice gets that threatening growly thing goin’ on.”

“I assume you’re not at work.”

“You assume right. I’m picking up some stuff from Sam’s house, then I’m picking up Sam, then I pick up his prescription, then I transport the whole mess to my place. I’m taking the day off. We should be settled in by five.”

“Two police officers were here.”

A slight hesitation. “And?”

“And they bought coffee and corn chips and left.”

Dean laughed. “See, I told you there was nothing to worry about.”

Cas shook his head, but simply said, “Give me a call if there’s anything I can do.”

“I’ll probably call you about 11:30 anyway. You’ll be home by then, right?”

“Yes.”

Dean sighed, a long vocalized thrum of sound. “Hope Sam appreciates the sacrifice I’m making for him.”

“In all seriousness, I hope he does.”

“Talk to you tonight.”

“I look forward to it.”

August 29th. Sam’s week at Dean’s house had seemed, on the surface, to go well. Sam spent most of the first two days sleeping, the next two days watching TV, and the three days after that trying to get back to work, answering emails and doing the jobs he could do using the laptop Dean had brought from Sam’s house. Dean spent the first day at home with Sam. Then he had to go back to work, so Cas came by in the late mornings and early evenings for the next couple of days to help Sam with lunch and keep an eye on him until Cas had to go back to work. After that Sam insisted he’d be fine and could make his own lunch, and he clearly was feeling better.

But as the week went on, Dean grew more withdrawn. At first he’d been happy that Sam didn’t demand alcohol; then he began to suspect that Sam was substituting his pain pills for alcohol. These were more powerful pills than his normal prescription. There were enough pills to keep Sam comfortable for a couple of weeks, but after that, Dean told Cas, he had the feeling that Sam would slip right back into drinking if he couldn’t get a refill.

“You know how I told you I wasn’t going to nag him about rehab?” Dean asked on the sixth day. They were walking around the block at Dean’s place, in the late morning, enjoying the warmth of early fall but feeling an edge of the autumn chill in the occasional wind gust. “Well, I had to at least ask him. He of course doesn’t have a car right now, it’s totaled, and until he can turn his head better he doesn’t think he should drive anyway – ”

“Ah, common sense surfaces.”

“Yeah, finally. The point is, anywhere he goes we’ve either got to get him transported or I have to drive him, and if he can’t get into the place in Idaho Falls he goes to frickin’ Boise. So we need to talk about arrangements, which, he said he agreed, but – not right now. Later. When his neck feels better.”

Cas sighed a little. “Well. And maybe he will.”

“Yeah. He did once before.”

“Exactly.”

Dean rubbed his face. “God, I miss fucking you.”

“As ever, the romantic.”

“I’m taking Sam home tomorrow. Come over after work. Unless,” Dean shrugged in a failed attempt to look as if it didn’t matter, “you’re too tired.”

“Never. Never too tired for you.”

So, on the night of August 29th, Cas parked in front of Dean’s house with anticipation. He had the next day off; he hadn’t forgotten Dean’s manhandling of him a week ago or his own resolve to return the favor; he had a great story idea in mind. All the stars were aligning for the exciting next couple of hours he had planned.

He stepped inside Dean’s front room, and all the plans went straight to hell.

Strong hands pulled him out of the doorway, slammed the door behind him, and pushed him against it. Dean, wearing his preferred story-hour outfit of jeans, a belt with the sheathed knife, and a white T-shirt, grabbed Cas’ shirt collar and wrenched it to one side, biting and sucking on Cas’ neck. Cas grabbed Dean’s butt and squeezed as Dean shifted his attention to Cas’ mouth, invading it and chewing on Cas’ lip.

Cas ran his hands up under Dean’s shirt, excited as always by the feel of muscle moving under the skin. Dean grabbed his wrists and pinned them to the door.

“First,” he gasped, “you’re gonna take off your pants. Then you’re – ”

“Oh no. You gave the orders last time. I give them this time.”

Dean grinned. “The hell you say, Detective,” and he sank his teeth into Cas’ neck again like an apex predator.

Cas wrenched one hand free, grabbed Dean’s belt buckle, and gave it a hard jerk to one side. Dean gave a little startled gasp, loosening his hold, and Cas forged toward the bedroom, dragging Dean by the belt.

Dean was laughing as he staggered along. “You realize you’re dragging me where I want you to go?”

Cas slammed him into the open bedroom door, which shuddered against the wall with a bang. He grabbed the front of Dean’s shirt and got in his face, his lips a couple of inches from Dean’s. “You realize that what you want isn’t tonight’s priority?”

“We’ll see.” Dean grabbed the back of Cas’ head and crushed Cas’ mouth with his own. Cas floated on enjoyment for a moment, then decided to reassert control. He grabbed at Dean’s belt again, thinking vaguely about literally getting into his pants, but his hand touched the hilt of the knife. Much of the time Dean had the top strap of the sheath unfastened, and that was the case tonight.

Cas freed the knife, pulled out of the violent kiss, and nudged the knife’s hilt into Dean’s ribcage. “Don’t make any sudden moves.”

Dean understood instantly and went still, his breath coming deep and rough, watching Cas examine the knife. “What do you think you’re going to do with that?”

Cas raised it to Dean’s throat. Dean met his gaze, smiling a little, panting.

Cas clutched the neck of Dean’s T-shirt and caught it with the knife. He’d expected it to be more difficult to slice through the binding at the neck, but Dean kept the blade in beautiful shape, and when Cas reached the shirt itself he simply held the blade still and pulled up the fabric. With a tiny catch at the hem, the shirt split wide open, and Cas yanked it off of Dean.

“That was my favorite T-shirt,” Dean said plaintively.

Cas gave him a brief bitchface and said, “They’re all alike,” before he began running the blade very lightly over Dean’s chest and arms.

The knife came to rest on Dean’s left bicep. Cas pressed the side of the blade against the skin and met Dean’s gaze.

Dean raised his eyebrows a bit. “Just remember, what goes around comes around.”

Fascinated at the sight and at himself, Cas began cutting a curve into Dean’s shoulder. He’d never deliberately cut into human flesh before. Dean cursed heartily but stood still. The knife was so sharp that there wasn’t much blood, just a brilliant red wet “C” a little smeared at the end. Cas licked the wound, sucked on it, kissed it. Dean made a low moaning sound.

Cas lifted the knife and, with delicate little dabs of his tongue, licked the blood off of the blade. It was salty and warm, with a slight scent of rust coming from the blood itself.

Dean watched him for a moment, then, as though his knees were giving way, slid down the wall a little. “God, Cas,” he said with a gaping smile, “you’re killin’ me.”

Cas turned the knife and presented the hilt to Dean. When Dean took it, Cas tore off his own shirt.

“What, like matching tattoos? How precious.”

Dean unbuckled Cas’ belt one-handed (and that must have required practice somewhere along the line), and grabbed Cas’ belt, pants waistband, and underwear waistband in one fist.

“I’d rather you didn’t use that on my cock.”

Dean snorted. “I’d rather I didn’t too.” The knife blade tickled over Cas’ chest. “Take the rest of it off.”

“You first.”

“You really are holding a grudge, aren’t you?”

“Not a grudge.” Cas’ smile was benign. “Just a desire for justice.”

“Oh.” Dean tossed the knife on the floor a few feet away. “I’m all about justice.”

He tried to grab Cas’ arms, but only got one. Cas wheeled, wrenching free, and threw his arms around Dean from behind, pinioning him. Dean let out a brief animal snarl, bucking and whirling, actually lifting Cas’ feet off the floor for a moment.

Cas planted his feet and leaned hard, forcing Dean toward the bed. He leaned, in fact, a little too hard; Dean kicked one foot out from under him and he started to fall. Dean caught him and half-threw him onto the bed.

Cas started to sit up and Dean pounced on him. Once again they wrestled, struggling for superiority, and this time Dean won, rolling Cas over with his face in a pillow and sitting on his thighs.

Then he lay on Cas’ back, and for a moment they both just tried to catch their breaths.

“Think this is over. Don’t you?” Cas gasped.

“Not. Yet.”

Dean reached for something under the bed. Cas tried to power himself upward with his arms, but Dean already had the handcuffs and simply pushed one of Cas’ arms out from under him. He wrenched it behind Cas’ back as Cas gave a brief yell of pain, and put a cuff on Cas’ wrist.

(After an unfortunate incident a few weeks back, Cas had placed a ring of several layers of electrical tape around each cuff. The cuffs still closed, but were blocked from sliding shut enough to cut off blood circulation to the hands.)

Cas kept the other arm under him, rolling back and forth, trying to pitch Dean off. That ended fast when Dean reached under him and stuck a hand down his pants. With a moan, Cas spasmed, and Dean got hold of his other wrist, locking both hands behind him.

Cas tried to think of a clever maneuver, but then Dean’s hands were inside his clothes again and cleverness wasn’t an option. Dean took everything off of Cas, leaving him cuffed and naked and lying face-down, then stood.

Lying still, Cas watched him. Dean, for his part, acted as though he had no idea that anyone was looking at him. He took his belt completely off, sliding it out of the loops of his jeans and the sheath. He found the knife, put it back in the sheath, put the sheath back on the belt. Then he pulled off his jeans. Now completely nude, he buckled the belt back around his waist, the sheathed knife lying against his hip.

A moan broke from Cas. “You’re killin’ me, Dean.”

Dean took a moment to check his arm in the mirror. The carved C was bleeding, but not spectacularly. He went back to the bed, straddled Cas’ thighs, and began pinching his buttocks as if to judge their fitness for something.

That did it. Cas began thrusting, pounding so hard against the mattress that Dean braced himself with a hand on the wall, and came on the bedspread.

When he finally stopped, Dean chirped “First!” like an internet idiot.

“At least accomplished – that part of the plan.”

“There was a plan? Did it include this?”

A hot point of pain on his left buttock grew to an angry arc of pain. Cas kept his groan behind clenched teeth, his bound hands stretched at full length behind him, which wracked his shoulders. He could feel Dean’s free hand pushing back against his hands, making sure they didn’t come in contact with the blade.

The fresh pain stopped, leaving only the burning throb of already cut skin. Cas relaxed, gasping.

“So we kind of do have matching scars,” Dean said. “The D is just like a backward C. Well, with that extra stroke.”

A short straight slash on his skin. Cas started, swearing and laughing at the same time.

Dean held the blade in front of his lips. “You want to clean it off again?”

With the same delicate flicks of the tongue, Cas licked his own blood off of the knife. Dean gave a little moan before he put the knife away.

“So,” Cas said, turning his head slightly and trying not to be distracted by how hard Dean was, “you burned my right hip and cut my left cheek. You seem to be obsessed with my ass.”

“That’s ’cause it’s mine,” Dean said, giving a hearty slap to the fresh cuts.

Cas swore and laughed again. But then Dean knelt beside the bed and began doing to Cas’ injury what Cas had done to his – licking, sucking, kissing.

Cas’ mind went on vacation. He heard himself saying, “I give up, give up – Do anything you want, I don’t care, anything you want – ”

Dean stood, dropped off the belt, picked up a tube from the nightstand and sat beside Cas, smoothing and lubricating him with warm hands. Cas writhed and moaned, no brain at all now. Dean unlocked the cuffs and Cas brought his arms around with a grunt of pain at the readjustment.

Dean began pushing Cas around to the position he wanted. “Next time,” he said dryly, just before his first thrust, “be sure to tell me about the plan.”

August 31st. By unspoken mutual consent, they just ate dinner and watched TV the next night. The most physical contact they had was applying disinfectant to each other’s wounds and salve to each other’s wrenched muscles.

But on August 31st, when Cas came in the door after work, Dean was sitting on the living room sofa waiting for him with an air of almost forcibly subdued excitement. “Sit down, relax for a while, but then come on downstairs. I’ve got a great new story idea.”

“Give me fifteen minutes. And a beer.”

Dean did so, watching TV and keeping an eye on Cas as Cas yawned, untied and took off his shoes, stretched out his legs and sipped beer.

Finally he rubbed his face, sat up, and smiled at Dean. “Let’s go have some fun.”

There was a new magazine atop the stack on the basement coffee table, an issue of Sports Illustrated. Cas, still in his stocking feet, slid on the trench coat while looking down at the picture Dean held on his lap.

It was a soccer player, captured in an instant’s motion. His long lean legs were stretched in mid-stride, his arms bent as if propelling him, his gaze was fixed on a soccer ball just ahead of and above his foot. His floppy brown hair was kept off his face by a sweatband, but other than that it tossed as though in a gale.

“This is John Smith,” Dean began.

“Seriously?”

“Someone’s gotta be named that.”

“True.”

“Sad case. Not a lot of violence involved in this one.”

“Probably just as well,” said Cas, who was still leaning to his right when he sat.

“He’s a werewolf. Someday we’re gonna go after the bastard who turned him, but right now he’s urgent. And we know where he is. I was watching him before the full moon, got to know him, and you can tell something’s up with him. Two weeks before the full moon he’s this – smart guy who’s also a jock, talkin’ to you about history while he juggles a ball with his feet. A week before the full moon he’s still pretty good company, but he’s edgy and easy to piss off, or he’s eating steak so rare it’s almost raw and kinda zoned out. I lost him the day of the full moon – you can kick me for that later – ”

“I’m sure you’ve kicked yourself enough. No one’s perfect.”

“Yeah, but someone could’ve got killed. Actually, someone almost did. He was running across a country road, and got hit by a car. Werewolves run on their hind legs, so on that dark road it would’ve looked to the driver like he hit a person, but I could tell from studying the skid marks that he took off without stopping, and he never reported it.”

“Subject for another story line, possibly.”

Dean grinned. “Yeah, take that one on, would you? I have the feeling it’s not the first time the asshole’s done that.”

Cas grinned back. “I’m sure it’s not.”

“Anyway, the way I figure it, John Smith must’ve just laid in a wheat field howling for a while, and then turned back into a human. Once he does that, he remembers, you know, there are hospitals and things, and crawls back to the road. Someone sees him, stops, calls 911, and he spends three days in the hospital. He was hurt, broken leg and ribs, but not too badly – you know how fast werewolves heal. He just tells the docs he doesn’t know why he’s naked, and they figure he tore his clothes off in pain-induced delirium or something. You know he’s going to feel a lot better when he turns again, but this is his life: He hates himself, he’s in pain all the time, and then every once in a while he feels fine but he’s gonna kill someone or get himself killed. It’s a shitty situation.”

Cas blinked and looked back at the picture.

“So like I say, I’d been getting to know him. I went into his favorite place to eat when he was there, told him I was having trouble with a woman and needed to vent, made up a bullshit story while I bought him a rare burger and three or four drinks. Once he was good and mellow I walked him outside, looked around to make sure no one saw us – I’d parked a few blocks away – and suggested he’d had enough booze that he should loan me his keys and I’d drive him home. He gave me a little grief, but not too much.”

Cas looked Dean in the eye. “Obviously he trusted you.”

“And he was right, wasn’t he? I was going to put him out of his misery and make sure he didn’t kill anyone.”

He looked at Cas, who was silent. Dean continued, “I asked to use his bathroom and did a quick search. The pain pills that he got after the crash, after the car hit him, were on a table right by the bed. He was asleep in front of the TV when I got back to the living room, so I took the pills out to the kitchen. Had to look around for bowls and utensils, the guy barely keeps himself fed.”

“In spite of being a professional athlete.”

“Oh – Yeah, I mean in the off-season. Anyway, I put six of the pills in a bowl, broke ’em up with a knife, and then crushed them into powder with a spoon. I got two beers out of the refrigerator – ”

“Stop,” Cas said.

Dean crinkled his brow, a look of puzzlement that, Cas thought, was clearly feigned.

“You’re talking about Sam.”

Dean laughed dismissively. “Sam’s not a werewolf.”

“A tall thin smart guy who has pain pills from a recent car accident. Who has a curse that makes him hate himself. That makes him dangerous to himself and other people.”

Dean waved a hand as if to say that was the stupidest thing he’d ever heard. But he said, “You’ve got to admit, sounds pretty accurate.”

Cas stood and took off the trench coat. “I’m tired. I’m going to bed.”

Dean looked up at him, controlling the rage underlying his voice. “But since you brought up the subject – you, not me – I talked to him about rehab again the other day.”

“And he put it off again.”

“He’s never going to go, you know.”

“Maybe not. Or maybe he will.”

And after a moment Cas continued, “You need to think long and hard before you decide someone else’s future for them.”

Dean, staring down at the picture, shrugged.

“Would you like me to go back to my place tonight?”

“Why?” Dean still wasn’t looking at him. “Because you’re not in the mood? I’m not that much of an asshole.”

Cas ran a hand over Dean’s shoulders on the way to the staircase.

Dean stayed downstairs. Cas went into the upstairs bathroom and picked up his toothbrush.

Then he stopped all movement.

He put the toothbrush back and opened the medicine chest, surveying it, looking behind boxes and bottles.

He went to the door and glanced into the hall. There was no sight or sound of Dean, so he went to the bedroom.

Dean’s nightstand drawer was a small junkyard, but the junk was all Dean’s. Cas thought for a moment, went to the dresser, and went through Dean’s underwear drawer, trying not to displace anything.

And there it was, at the back of the drawer – a full bottle of pills prescribed to Sam Winchester.

He knew exactly what it was. This was Sam’s old pain prescription. He had renewed it just before his car accident, and Dean had picked this one up at the same time that he’d picked up the new prescription. The new hospital-prescribed pills, just two weeks’ worth, were more powerful than the old script, and Sam probably hadn’t even noticed that he didn’t have pills from the old prescription.

And Dean, fearful of his brother’s combining alcohol with two different opiates, was probably just holding the old prescription for Sam until he knew that Sam wouldn’t get a renewal on the new prescription.

Probably.

He heard the door to the basement in the kitchen close, then silence – Dean looking through the refrigerator. He slipped the pills into his pants pocket and changed quickly into the pajama pants he slept in, hanging his shirt in the half of the closet he was using and placing his slacks, carefully folded, in a dresser drawer.

When Dean came back down the hall with a slice of pie and a fork on a saucer, Cas was going into the bathroom to brush his teeth. They didn’t say much to each other, but they slept peacefully side by side. Dean fell asleep long before Cas did.

September 2nd. The moment Cas walked in the door at 11:30, Dean stood and said abruptly, “Basement.”

“Uh – mind if I take my work clothes off first?”

“I don’t know. Can I depend on you not to do something stupid while you’re changing?”

Cas sighed a little. “Can I depend on coming up from the basement in one piece?”

“I’m mad, I’m not homicidal.”

“All right. I’ll be right down.”

“Oh, I’ll wait here for you.”

Cas shrugged and went back to the bedroom to change into clothes that didn’t smell like a combination of hot dog grease and bathroom disinfectant, wondering how it was possible to be terrified and sexually aroused at the same time. You’d think that one would wither the other. So to speak.

This wasn’t play-acting rage; Dean was genuinely angry. If he’d been working up to something exciting, he’d have grabbed Cas’ arm or given him a push, touching him at any chance. Instead he banged the basement door open and waved his hand to usher Cas through, following him down the stairs and passing him to stand by the sofa. So he’d gone to get Sam’s pills and had found them missing.

Only when Cas reached the sofa did Dean touch him, pushing him down to sit and standing over him. “We need to revisit John Smith.”

“If you mean Sam Winchester, no, I don’t think we do.”

“Where are the pills, Cas?”

Cas drew a breath. “There’s a locked bin at the police station where people can deposit any kind of drugs, no questions asked. I peeled Sam’s name off the label and put them in there.”

Dean slammed a hand against his own thigh and half-turned, gritting his teeth. Cas watched him carefully.

“Sam’s going in for a follow-up tomorrow. If the doctor doesn’t renew the new prescription, he’s going to wonder where the old one is.”

“Then you shouldn’t have stolen them.”

“I was keeping them. I could have given them back to him.”

“I know you were planning on giving them back to him. Most of them at once, probably mixed with beer.”

“As opposed to the way he’ll handle them, killing himself an inch at a time.”

“You cannot go to prison, Dean. I won’t allow it.”

“You won’t have anything to do with it. I won’t go to prison.”

“People will know you were at Sam’s house. They’ll recognize the car, they’ll recognize you – ”

“And so what? I’m his brother! There’s no reason why I shouldn’t be at his place the night he killed himself. In fact, I can tell the cops he called me over because he was feeling rotten and I thought I had him calmed down and I guess I didn’t. Meanwhile – while you’re making a case – he tried to hang himself once. He almost blew himself up on the Fourth of July. He has a court date set for the DUI where he damn near killed himself. No one would be surprised if he OD’d. He wants to die, Cas, and.”

He choked off the end of the sentence. Cas met his gaze.

“And you want to kill.”

Dean dropped down on the sofa.

“C’mon, Cas, what are we doing here? Just endless masturbating?”

Cas looked at the box of pictures.

“Eventually,” Dean said, “you have to do the deed.”

Cas shook his head.

After a moment, “I’m – very satisfied with what we’re doing. It doesn’t feel like endless masturbation to me.”

“It doesn’t? You never wonder what it would be like to take it a step further?”

“The difference between telling stories and actual murder is more than one step.”

“Doesn’t feel that way to me. I feel like – I want – ” Dean shook his head, running his fist through the air.

“Shall I tell you what will happen to you in prison, Dean? You think you’re tough enough not to be afraid of anyone. But you’ll run across another tough guy, and the two of you will end up slashing each other’s guts. I’ll spend – Sam and I will spend our last hours with you in a prison hospital, watching you die slowly of septicemia.”

“You’re assuming I’ll get caught.”

“The first time, you might not. Maybe not even the second time. But you’re very good-looking, Dean. Your personality is striking. A bar full of people saw you pull a knife on someone. Even the car – There’s nothing about you that doesn’t attract attention. And yes, eventually you’ll get caught.”

Dean opened his mouth, closed it, dropped down beside Cas on the sofa. “You know what I just realized? In all the talking about prison and septicemia? You haven’t once said, ‘But Dean, it’s wrong to kill people!’”

Silence hung heavily for a few seconds.

“It is, of course,” Cas said.

Dean tipped his head and studied Cas, looking just a little amused.

“I admit,” Cas said, “I would – I would help you to plan one murder and get away with it, if that would make you happy.” He shook his head. “But you would want another, and then another. You wouldn’t be able to stop. And eventually, yes, there would be prison. And you wouldn’t be able to tolerate being locked up. You would go insane.”

Dean shook his head, looking across the room.

“Just – take a few days to think about it. Really think about what the loss of your freedom would mean to you. To me.”

“A few days,” Dean said. “Got it.”

He went back upstairs, and after a few moments, so did Cas.

September 3rd. If Sam hadn’t called while Dean was in the shower, everything would have ended differently.

Cas was luxuriating in the extra couple of hours of dozing that his later work schedule allowed him when he heard Dean’s ring tone. Curious, he rolled over to look at the phone on Dean’s nightstand, then he picked it up. “Hello, Sam, this is Cas. Dean’s in the shower right now. Can I give him a message?”

“Yeah, would you – actually, I’m glad I got hold of you,” Sam said. “Do you know – Is everything OK with Dean?”

“Yes. To my knowledge. Did he say something – ”

“Not really. He called yesterday and said he wanted to come over tomorrow night, have a talk just between us. He said it was no big deal, but of course he would say that even if it was.”

Cas shot a look at the bathroom door. “I don’t know of any new problems, Sam.”

“Well, the problem is, I got a job at a guy’s office and it got hairy. I’m going over there at three tomorrow afternoon and I’ll be there until late, probably most of the next day, too. But Dean’s been, you know, such help to me, if he seriously needs to have a brother talk, I hate to just ditch him for work.”

The shower went off. “I wouldn’t worry about it, Sam,” Cas said calmly, keeping an eye on the bathroom door. “I think I know what he wants to talk about, and it will wait for a few days. I’ll tell him you called, and that he should call you day after tomorrow to set up another time.”

“Sounds good. Thanks, Cas.”

“Have a good day, Sam.” Cas disconnected, quickly put Dean’s phone back, and rolled over to his side of the bed just before Dean came out of the bathroom, still rubbing his hair dry.

By the time Cas had decided what to do, Dean had gone to work. So Cas got dressed, had breakfast, put on the trench coat, and drove to Idaho Falls.

Dean spotted him wheeling a cart in the Lumber aisle. “OK, two two-by-eights,” he said, looking puzzled. “About the right length for bookshelves, but awfully narrow and thick.”

“It’s a personal project I’m thinking of for the basement.”

Dean grinned. “Can I help?”

“It hasn’t quite gelled in my mind yet, but when it does, by all means yes.”

“Well, gel it. We could work on it tonight.”

Cas lowered his voice. “Or we could work on something else tonight.”

Normally that would have brought a smile to Dean’s face, but today his eyes cooled as he glanced around impatiently. “We’re not gonna fight about John Smith again.”

“No. We’re going to fight about Cathy Williams.”

Dean’s expression went from wary to intrigued, and then here came the smile. “Am I in some kind of trouble?” He shot his glance up and down the aisle. “Detective?”

“You’re in all kinds of trouble, Winchester,” Cas murmured. And then, as he turned away, he cast a quick sly glance back over his shoulder.

He drove back to Dean’s house, hid the boards under the bed in the basement, and installed the wall brackets he’d bought after seeing Dean. The important thing would be to keep Dean from noticing where they were installed when he came down into the basement. He might not know exactly why they were there, but he’d know something was up. 

So as soon as Dean touched foot to the basement floor that night, Cas grabbed him, spun him, pushed him up against the metal support pole facing the bulletin board and facing away from the lavatory, and kissed him hard.

When they came up for air, Dean laughed. “OK. If that’s being in trouble, I’m going to get in trouble a lot more often.”

Cas put the chair facing the bulletin board. “Sit down, Winchester.”

Dean did so cheerfully, but when Cas pulled the handcuffs out of his coat pocket Dean went suspicious. “Whoa, cowboy. I want to know exactly what we’re talking about before we get all B&D. Specifically, who we’re talking about. Because if it’s my brother – ”

Cas tapped a new picture on the bulletin board – a sharp-faced bleached blonde, heavily made up. There was a red X through her face. “I told you, we’re talking about Cathy Williams.”

“The late Cathy Williams, obviously.”

“As you should know. Because you were the one who was enraged that she managed to get away with poisoning her husband. You said one slow and painful death deserves another.”

Dean nodded, but since the story was new to him, he was still feeling his way. “And so – I gave her one?”

“But that’s not all you gave her, is it?”

After a moment, “You’re gonna have to give me a little more to go on here.”

Cas pushed back Dean’s shoulder, banging his back into the pole and tipping the chair. “Don’t play stupid with me. You didn’t tell me about it at the time, but did you think it wouldn’t make the news? You raped her.”

Dean looked a little surprised, then casual. “Well – yeah. After I got into the house and cut her a couple of times, she was crying and yelling and I told her to be quiet. She actually put her own hand over her own mouth to try to keep herself quiet. She said she’d do anything if I wouldn’t kill her. It was pretty exciting, so yeah, I knocked her down and slammed the back of her head on the floor a couple of times, cut her clothes up and fucked her. I said, ‘You know, I bet your husband said to God a bunch of times that he’d do anything to make the pain stop, but the only out he got was death, wasn’t it?’ I don’t know why you’re so bent out of shape. I guarantee you she didn’t enjoy it.”

“That’s not the point. Did you enjoy it?”

A look of understanding came to Dean and he grinned. “Ohhh. Are we a little jealous?”

Cas sat, straddling Dean’s legs, reached down and pulled Dean’s knife, rested the point against his chin. “You didn’t tell me about it. Was it some private little memory you were going to enjoy?”

“I tell you what. You rape the next one, we’ll be even. Or – ” Dean’s eyes flickered. “Better yet. We’ll share the next one.”

“Male or female?”

“Whichever. We can take turns, and then – reminisce about it afterward.” Dean shifted his legs a bit. “Oh, yeah. You like that idea, don’t you?”

“It’s exciting. But you still have to pay for not telling me the whole truth about Cathy Williams.”

He flourished the handcuffs, and Dean said, “Oh, I’m in real trouble now.”

Cas put the knife on the floor, handcuffed Dean’s hands behind his back, then used a belt to bind the handcuff chain to a back post of the chair.

Then he sighed a little, grabbed the back of the chair, and dragged it backward across the carpet. As he pulled Dean into the lavatory, Dean looked at the wall brackets on both sides of the lavatory door, and probably noticed that they weren’t nearly deep enough to hold shelves, and that it would be a damn weird place to put shelves anyway.

Cas worked his way around Dean – it was a small room – as Dean said, “What, are you gonna drown me in the toilet? Not that I wouldn’t deserve it.”

Just outside the door, Cas crouched in front of Dean. “Now we’re going to talk about your brother.”

“Son of a bitch.”

“He called this morning. I saw on your phone that it was him and I told him I’d take a message. He told me that he couldn’t get together with you tomorrow because he’s working on a big project the next couple of days, but he was very concerned about what was bothering you.”

Dean was silent, looking at Cas, stone-faced.

“What were you going to do without the pills? Get him pass-out drunk and cut his wrists? Maybe put him in a bathtub of water?”

Speaking very quietly and distinctly, Dean said, “It would end his unhappiness. And if you don’t let me go now, your unhappiness is just going to be beginning.”

“I won’t let you go to prison, Dean. I know – you think everyone would assume Sam’s death was a suicide, and maybe you’d be right. But if you do it once, you won’t be able to stop. And you’re thinking of prison as something that won’t happen, or a temporary annoyance where you’ll be the top dog, but it will destroy you.”

He stood. “So you’re going to get a taste of it.” He turned the sink’s faucet on steadily, then backed hastily away from the reach of Dean’s kick. “You won’t thirst to death. And you won’t be here long enough to starve. But you will be here long enough to get the idea of what life in a concrete hole is like. And long enough for me to persuade Sam to go into rehab, where he’ll be out of your reach for a while.”

“I’m warning you, Cas.” Dean’s voice was still quiet. “Don’t do this.”

“I’m desperate. I’m trying to save your life.”

Cas closed the door, hurried to the bed, pulled out the boards, and went back. The lavatory door shuddered as Dean kicked it, and Cas dropped one board sideways into a pair of brackets at about the level of his chest, the other into a pair of brackets at about the level of his thighs. The brackets now held a wooden door barricade about sixteen inches high and two inches thick.

He heard thuds and yelling, on and off, for several hours. At two in the morning, when it had been quiet for a couple of hours, he quietly removed the bottom board.

He didn’t need to move the top board. Dean had provided him with a peep hole, using the chair legs as a battering ram, backing into the hollow-core door with enough force to punch a hole in it, which Cas looked through. The door-punching had broken off one of the back legs, which meant that Dean couldn’t sit on the chair and kick at the board barricade with his feet. He may have tried to break the chair up, to give himself more freedom of motion, because one of the back slats was in the sink, but mostly it had held together. Since he couldn’t relax in a three-legged chair, Dean had at some point just rested the chair seat on the toilet seat and dropped off, leaning back to relieve the strain on his arms and shoulders, his head tipped to one side, snoring a little.

Cas replaced the board and went back to the basement bed, where he was sleeping.

September 5th. Dean had been imprisoned for 38 hours when Cas took away both boards of the barricade. The brackets were starting to pull out of the wall, and the door was practically splintered. Cas couldn’t even imagine how bruised Dean’s shoulders and back must be.

He opened the door, and an awful smell rolled out of the tiny room. Dean looked up at him like a wounded animal, frightened and frightening at once.

“I’m getting you out of here,” Cas said, and a striking look of hope joined the other emotions on Dean’s face.

“So I – ” His voice was hoarse, and he cleared his throat. “I assume this means that Sam is now in rehab, all safe from my evil?”

“He is not.”

Dean tried to look like he’d never had any hope. “What a surprise.”

“He said he has a few major projects coming up and can’t afford the time.”

“Of course he can’t.”

“His weakness is all the more reason why you shouldn’t risk imprisonment for any action you might take about him.”

“How long did you rehearse that line? Let me go, you son of a bitch.”

Cas went over to him and discovered that the belt binding the handcuffs to the chair had been wrenched and loosened enough to fall off. The cuffs, however, still bound Dean’s wrists behind him. Cas expected to be struck as soon as Dean was loose, but realized immediately that even if Dean had wanted to, it would have been impossible: He grunted in pain as his shoulders and arms slowly resumed their normal position.

“Now imagine ten or twenty years living like this. Possibly in solitary.”

“Fuck you, Cas. I give up.”

Cas went silent, confused.

“I was thinking about it. When I realized there was no way of getting out fast, I started thinking about ways to fake you into letting me out. And I realized – No, if I were in prison, faking out one person wouldn’t do it. You’d need a whole – And even then, you keep running and looking over your shoulder, and they eventually find you. Best way is to do your time like a good boy and hope for parole. Staring at those fucking walls for years on end, trying to keep out of fights. And then what? Hope somebody’s up for hiring a paroled killer? So I give up. I’ll keep telling my fucking little stories to myself, and Sam will keep killing himself by inches, and eventually we’ll both die.”

He stared at the floor. After a few moments Cas said, “But as long as you are both still alive, other solutions are possible.”

Dean shook his head.

He started to rise and straighten his back, wavered a little, grabbed hold of the sink. Cas put forward a hand to help him and Dean warned him away with a look.

He hobbled for his first couple of steps, but recovered his normal walking pretty quickly. When he reached the basement door he reached for the knob and winced. “I’m going to have to think of some reason why I can’t reach and lift at work. Did you think of that?”

“Yesterday was a day off for you,” Cas said, coming closer. “This morning I told them you were sick. You’ll have the rest of this afternoon, tonight, and tomorrow morning to recuperate, and if that’s not enough, I’ll tell them you’re still contagious.”

“I’ll tell them,” Dean said in a hard voice. “Right now I’m going to throw out these jeans, shower and try to scrub my ass with arms that are killing me, then go and find someplace in this lousy town where I can get a burger and a beer in the same place.”

He started up the steps slowly.

“I assume you want me to move out while you’re gone.”

Dean stopped and said, “Stay or go. I really don’t care.” Then he started climbing again.

September 20th. So, given the choice, Cas stayed. He continued to sleep in Dean’s house, although he slept in the basement bedroom. He continued to go there after work and watch TV, though they watched in silence. Dean’s coldness and silence were very hard to bear, and of course Dean knew that. Cas decided that he could wait out Dean’s anger, however long that took.

Sam lost his driver’s license, which actually worked out well. Sam did most of his work at home anyway, and was able to afford taxis for field work, errands, and trips to bars. And he’d received a refill on the heavy-duty pain pills – albeit not from a doctor with the best reputation in the county. It was a legal prescription, and by the time it was used up – providing that Sam used them as they were meant to be used – a renewal of his old prescription would be due, and with luck he’d never need to ask what had become of the previous bottle of pills.

Cas knew about Sam’s pills because Dean had picked them up for him. Dean was giving Cas brief bulletins about his activities in the mornings; “Gonna pick up some cereal and milk and bring it back here. Need anything? Then work, then I’m goin’ out with some of the guys from work, so I’ll be back about the same time you are. ’Bye.”

Cas didn’t care if Dean was brusque. He didn’t care if Dean’s anger lasted for weeks. He only cared that Dean didn’t do something that would eventually, in slow stages, completely change and completely destroy him.

For two weeks they went on like that, Cas saying “Good-night” as he headed for the basement door, and Dean responding, “Yeah.” Then on September 20th, Dean turned off the TV in the middle of a late-night talk show and asked, “Tomorrow’s a day off for you, right?”

Cas was startled. “Yes.”

“Me too. So have you given it any more thought?”

Cas wracked his brain. “Given – what?”

“The next story. The one we’re going to share. I figured, you’ve been down the basement all this time – ”

“I don’t find story hour enjoyable without you.”

Dean smiled at him for the first time in days. “Well, I have an idea I think you’ll enjoy. First, though, there’s the matter of payback.”

“I didn’t lock you up as a game-playing move. I was desperately trying to convince you not to destroy yourself.”

“And I appreciate that,” Dean said, “sort of. All the same, there must be payback.”

As if Cas could ever resist him for long. “Do you want to lock me up?”

“I’m thinking of something a little more active. I’m thinking that you spend from now until dawn just doing anything I want you to. Bringing me a beer. Sucking my cock. Curling up at my feet while we watch porn. A little B&D, a little full-body massage. Whatever I want.”

“That’s – payback? I’m your love slave?”

“Got a problem with it?”

“Not at all. I’m only – I expected something more – painful.”

“Well, it might be painful. You don’t know.” Dean stood. “To start off with, open the basement door and get me a beer. Maybe we’ll get into pain later on.”

But actually, they never did.

Cas lost count of the number of ways he caressed and clutched and yielded to Dean. He stood unmoving – well, tried to – against a wall, and he crawled on the gray carpeting. He bound Dean and teased him, then let him loose and let Dean take revenge on him – at Dean’s bidding, pleading with him to stop. There was full-body massage and there was discipline, but it all resolved to the two of them melding with each other.

They both gave out well before dawn, sleeping in a tangle on the basement bed, and Cas didn’t feel at all like the recipient of payback. He felt like every orgasm, both his and Dean’s, had spread through every cell of his body, leaving him stimulated and calmed at once, and utterly happy.

September 21st. They had a late lunch together. Cas went to the dry cleaner and a bookstore, and when he got back Dean said he was going someplace to detail the Impala. Cas was a little surprised that there was someplace that would be open late enough – Dean detailing the Impala was a study in slow-motion perfectionism – but he said he’d have a late dinner ready when Dean got back, and stumbled to the master bedroom, tumbling onto the bed there for the first time in more than a week, closing his eyes in what must have been the world’s longest-lasting afterglow.

He woke up sharply two hours later, his eyes starting open and one sentence in his head: That was goodbye.

Dean was off doing something that Cas might find unforgiveable. Or something that might get him locked away where he and Cas couldn’t touch for a long time. In either case, Dean had arranged for a night where they could indulge themselves in each other, in case they never could again.

He sat up, staring at the wall, thinking.

His breath started coming fast, and a couple of times he shook his head.

He wiped his eyes.

Then, hoping he was wrong but knowing he wasn’t, he located his phone and called Sam.

Sam sounded tipsy but cheerful. “’Lo?”

“Sam, this is Cas. Is Dean there?”

“Oh, um – Well, he – Well, hell, yes he is. Moment.” Muttering somewhere beyond Sam’s partly covered phone, two voices, ending with Sam’s “. . . told him you’re here, so you guys talk.”

And a moment later, Dean’s voice: “Hi, Cas.”

“I give up.”

A pause. “A little late, don’t you think?”

“Obviously it’s not too late.”

“Look, I told Sam you and I have been having a couple problems, and we’ve been having a good talk here, so why don’t you just wait and I’ll – ”

“Is your car parked in front of the house?” Cas asked (at the same time hearing Sam in the background, “You should talk to him!”).

“Yeah, no reason why not.”

“Unless they’re able to establish a time of death.”

“I’ve thought about it, OK?”

“Does Sam have a will?”

“What?”

Cas said each word carefully. “Does Sam have a will?”

“I don’t know, man, what the hell – Just a moment.” More of Sam’s voice in the background, a muffled, “. . . wait in the kitchen . . . you two talk.”

“OK, thanks, bro,” Dean said. “Look through the takeout menus, would you?” Then after a moment, “What the hell?”

“What’s Sam’s net worth? Is it more than yours?”

“Just about have to be. Who cares?”

“Does he own the house, or rent it?”

“Own, I think. Cas, what – ”

“Bank accounts? Investments?”

“I don’t know.”

“If Sam has a will, he probably leaves it all to you. If he doesn’t, by Idaho’s laws of intestate succession, it will all go to you anyway. That’s what the police call motive. Not to mention the emotional strain he’s put you through. You were obviously there on the night of his supposed suicide, that’s what they call opportunity. And as for means – ”

“It’s not about money.”

“Sure, tell the police that, they’ll buy the story that it was a mercy killing and just let you go. What about means? The bathtub? Are you planning to wait until he’s passed out to get him in there? Have you thought about the clumsiness of undressing someone who’s six-foot-four and completely inert, and putting him into a porcelain tub, without banging him up and bruising him?”

“Wouldn’t be surprising. All things considered.”

“So you’re absolutely sure the police don’t know the kinds of bruises that a drunk inflicts on himself, as opposed to the kinds of bruises he gets when someone else is hauling and dragging him around?”

Silence.

Cas closed his eyes. “Come – Just come home, Dean. I give up. Just let me plan it with you. Two minds are better than one. We’ll figure out a way where there’s no risk to you. Please.”

And after a moment, “OK. I’ll tell Sam we made up and I’m goin’ home.”

“And you’ll be here in half an hour.”

“Or so.”

“Dean, I swear, if you’re not home in forty-five minutes, I’ll come up with some excuse for the Idaho Falls police to make a welfare check on Sam. At least attempted murder would be better than murder.”

“You’re a fuckin’ piece of work, you know that?” Dean’s voice was half-admiring. “OK. Start the timer. On my way.”

He disconnected.

Cas closed his eyes again.

He felt like he was shivering convulsively, but when he looked down at his own hand it was still.

He stood and left the bedroom, starting down the hall, then made a sudden turn and lunged into the bathroom, where he vomited into the toilet.

He cleaned up quickly, then went out to his car. When Dean returned, Cas was sitting at the dining table, eating a bowl of chili.

“Smells good,” Dean said, dropping his leather jacket over a chair. “Got any more?”  
“Sure. I’ll get it, it needs re-heating. I thought you’d have eaten by now.”

“At Sam’s house?”

“Good point.” Cas turned up the burner under the chili pot and brought Dean a glass of Jack Daniels.

Dean shot a suspicious look at the glass as Cas set it in front of him. “Better not be planning to get me drunk and lock me up again.”

“I told you, I give up.” Cas settled back into his chair and took a sip of beer. “What problems did you tell Sam we were having?”

“I told him you weren’t as sexually adventurous as I wanted.”

“You didn’t, seriously, say that to your brother.”

“Well, not in those words, of course. I hemmed and hawed and hinted – I was trying to draw out the time, you know, and that did it. He was startin’ his third beer when he finally got it.”

“And then what did he say?”

“You mean after, ‘Eeew, Dean, you couldn’t have taken this to Dr. Phil?’ He said you were the best thing that ever happened to me and I should have some patience.”

Cas smiled, then sobered. “Are you sure you want – to do this?”

“Cas, I swear to God, if I have to go through another thing where he almost dies it’s gonna kill me. You want that?”

“No.” Cas took a drink. “The problem is this: You’re the only one who needs an alibi for Sam’s death. No one else has reason to kill him. If you can’t be guilty, it has to be a suicide. But at the same time, you want to be the one to do it, am I right?”

“Well, yeah. Not gonna let some stranger kill my brother. Guy might screw it up and hurt him. The point is to get him out of pain.”

“Even if the other guy were me?”

Dean looked at him, startled, and Cas looked back with his normal slightly sad gaze, no normal-cheerful schtick needed here.

“Would you be up for that?”

Cas shook his head a little. “How often do I need to say this, Dean? I’m up for anything that keeps you out of prison. I’m a part of this.” He reached across with his beer bottle and clinked it against Dean’s glass. “Like it or not.”

He looked over at the steaming pot and went to fill a bowl for Dean.

“Well, maybe we’re over-thinking the whole thing,” Dean said. “I’ll do the deed, you be my alibi. – Thanks.”

“Transportation.”

Dean shrugged, eating chili. “I drive the Impala to that shopping center about a mile away from Sam’s house, park it and walk. No, you’re right – ” He waved in acknowledgement of Cas’ raised eyebrow – “our luck, someone would see me walking up to Sam’s door.”

“Ideally, we would be able to mask the time of Sam’s death. And the only practicable way I can think of doing that is simply to ensure that his body isn’t discovered until well after his death.”

Dean’s lips worked a bit. “So he’s good and decomposed.”

Cas shrugged. “If this were a movie, we’d have access to a freezer or – or a steam room to stave off or accelerate decomposition. But that’s simply impractical. I think time alone is our best, least-conspicuous ally. We plan a two-week vacation and go to Sam’s house, unannounced, the night before we leave. We take my car, which hasn’t been seen in Sam’s neighborhood before. We tell him we just came over for a small party before we take off, maybe ask him to do something at your house while we’re gone.”

“Get the mail,” Dean said before a quick swallow of whiskey.

Cas nodded. “And drink. And, as you say, do the deed. Then make sure that his doors and windows are well locked, and go on vacation as planned.”

“Call a couple of times over the two weeks, like I’m just checking in and expect him to be there.”

“So those calls will be on any records they might check. That’s good. Maybe two or three calls the day before we come back, expressing anxiety that you haven’t heard back from him.”

“And then we – Cas, do you think you could’ve managed to get a little more garlic in this?”

Cas looked rueful. “My apologies. I did get carried away.” He stood. “I’ll get some water.”

Dean reached his arm back with his glass in it, giving Cas a smile over his shoulder. “How about just a refill. That’ll wash it down as well as anything.”

Cas smiled back, taking the glass, as Dean continued, “Then we come back and discover the body. Not lookin’ forward to that part.”

“If you have a violent physical reaction,” came Cas’ voice from the kitchen, “that will make things all the more convincing.”

“You mean, ‘I was really surprised to find my brother’s rotting corpse, officer, there’s my barf over there to prove it.’”

“Well, something like that,” Cas said, returning to the table with Dean’s refill and a fresh beer for himself.

“You’re good at this. The detail work.”

“I heard a saying once,” Cas said, “‘You don’t choose what you do. It chooses you.’ It never made much sense to me until recently.”

Dean nodded. “It wouldn’t have made much sense to me, either. But since I realized we needed to take it to the next level – and now with you on board – I know what’s chosen us.”

He blinked, looking at the tabletop as though he’d lost focus for a moment.

“Do you have a key to Sam’s house?” Cas asked.

Dean re-focused. “Now I do. Never really got around to it before – you remember we weren’t on great terms when he got his own place, and he’s never had pets or anything. But when he was in the hospital, he gave me a key so I could pick up some stuff for him. Had a copy made for myself and had a copy of my key made for him. He agreed – He agreed, good idea.” Dean nodded, seeming to lose focus again.

“Are you all right?”

Dean drew in a sharp breath. “Tired. Let’s talk. Let’s talk about something fun.”

“Maybe you should switch over to coffee.”

Dean shot a look at Cas and took another drink.

“Or not. What’s fun to talk about?”

“Well, not Sam. The one after Sam. Sam’s just – necessary. And, sort of, practice.”

“After Sam – ”

Dean’s eyes narrowed, and a grim little tic that could hardly be taken for a smile stretched his lips. “I used to go with this guy named Jim, teacher at BYU-Idaho.” He looked at Cas earnestly. “Did you know I wasn’t a virgin when we met?”

Cas chuckled, and Dean tossed off a drink at the success of his joke. “Nice guy. So closeted, not even funny, but nice, you know? An asshole he shared his office with saw him writing a letter to me – pen ’n’ paper letter, that kinda guy – and when he went to class, Asshole goes through his desk and finds it.”

“And outed him.”

“Not even. Threatened to out him if he didn’t break up with me and live his life the way Asshole dictated. And Jim, you know – his whole life is his family and his church. Couldn’t risk.”

He stared at the tabletop again.

“Dean?”

He roused himself. “He couldn’t risk it. Bowed down to Asshole, did everything he said. Asshole loves holding this – holding this power over him.”

“Closet case. And a sadistic one at that.”

Dean pointed at Cas. “My thought exactly. My other thought is, we grab Asshole, take him someplace nice ’n’ quiet, give him what he wants. Make him tell us it’s what he wants. Maybe carve ‘Queer’ or something on him, before we dump the body someplace public.”

“Well, the problem with that – ”

Dean started to stand, sat back down, rocking the chair, and shaking the table as he grabbed it for support.

“Dean?”

“Man I feel like crap,” Dean said in a monotone.

Cas stood, one hand to Dean’s forehead. “Head? Chest? Stomach?”

“Stomach and just – gotta lie down.”

Even leaning much of his weight on Cas, Dean struggled to make it back to the bedroom. “God, I hope it wasn’t the chili,” Cas said as Dean half-lunged, half rolled onto the bed. 

“You had’t too.”

“True. First things first. Something to settle the stomach, then get you some sleep.”

He left and came back a couple of minutes later, carrying a glass of cloudy water. “Dean? Wake up.”

He sat beside Dean, put one arm behind Dean’s back, and helped him sit up enough to drink. After a couple of sips Dean said, “Not fizzy.”

“Well, if this doesn’t work, doesn’t make you feel better, I’ll get you the fizzy stuff. Come on, couple more swallows.”

Dean finished the drink and dropped heavily back.

Cas sat on his side of the bed and watched Dean sleep. His breathing was heavy and stertorous.

After a few minutes he went to the dining table, picked up Dean’s whiskey glass. Then he opened a cupboard door in the kitchen and reached into a pot. That was where he’d put Sam’s pill bottle after he’d got it out of his car’s glove compartment and ground most of the pills into fine powder.

There were a few pills left in the bottle. Cas took it back to the bedroom with Dean’s glass, put a couple of pills in his hand and the bottle on top of Dean’s nightstand, and tried to wake Dean.

It was hard to do, but eventually Dean came around enough that Cas was able to make him understand. “Take these aspirin. They’ll help.”

Dean looked a little disgruntled and could barely sit up enough to swallow. He choked a little on the second pill, and Cas wasn’t even sure he realized that he was taking them with whiskey. His head fell back heavily on the pillow, a trickle of whiskey running from the corner of his mouth.

His eyes opened. Not wide, but suddenly. He looked into Cas’ eyes, seemingly trying to figure something out.

Then he said, “Love you.”

Cas’ voice shook. “I love you too. I always will.”

But Dean’s eyes were closed and Cas never knew if Dean had heard him.

He put Dean’s hand on the whiskey glass, moving the glass a bit to mimic what fingerprints would normally be left after picking up and putting down a glass several times. He didn’t mind if his own prints were on it, since he’d handed the glass to Dean earlier, but he wanted Dean’s prints to predominate, just in case anyone checked.

He left the whiskey glass and the pill bottle on Dean’s nightstand and took the glass of cloudy water. He’d put as much of the white powder into a glass of warm water as the liquid would hold before the powder started precipitating out. Besides substituting it for bicarbonate, he’d added a splash of that water to each of the two glasses of liquor he’d poured for Dean, simply stashing the water-powder solution under the sink next to the whiskey bottle.

Most of the opioid powder, of course, had gone into the pot of chili, after he’d dished up his own bowl. He’d taken a small bite and didn’t think that the powder could be tasted, but just in case, he’d added a couple of extra dashes of garlic powder.

He washed the pot, the glass, the bowl and spoon he’d used to crush the pills, and all of his and Dean’s dishes and utensils thoroughly, rinsing them carefully, drying and putting them away. He swept the floor and wiped the counter with a dry paper towel very carefully. There was almost no scattered powder – he’d been careful with it – but what there was he emptied into the drain. Then he rinsed the sink carefully, running hot water down it for a full minute.

Dean’s breathing was odd when he went back to the bedroom – a quick deep breath in, a pause, a sharp breath out, another pause. He watched that for a moment, wiping his eyes once again.

He hadn’t yet figured out what to do about the possibility of powder on his pants and shirt. He really didn’t think any investigation would get to the point of checking them. He took them off and shook them, seeing no powder flying in the air, and carefully put them away.

He used the bathroom, changed into his pajama pants, turned off the light, and lay down under the covers next to Dean, who was still on top of the covers and fully dressed. He put an arm over Dean’s waist and rested his head on Dean’s chest.

He could barely hear Dean’s sluggish heartbeat.

Now he could cry. The story would be that he had gone to bed alone after their shared dinner, waking in the middle of the night to discover Dean lying dead next to him. Of course he would cry over his dead lover. So he relaxed everything he’d been holding back and cried over his dying lover.

“You don’t choose what you do,” he whispered. “It chooses you.”

Dean’s agonal breaths grew lighter and less frequent.

Finally they stopped, and Cas couldn’t hear even a sluggish heartbeat.

He gave a long, broken, verbalized sob.

After a few minutes he rolled over, facing away from Dean, and lay very still, as if he’d been sleeping soundly in that position for some time.

He watched the clock, letting an hour and a half go by. Lying still for that long was easy, since he felt like something inside of him had died.

Even when he thought the time was right, he found it hard to rouse himself. He tensed up again inwardly, putting the intellect in charge of the emotions.

He rolled over, touched Dean, shook him as if trying to wake him. He turned on the bedside light, tore off the covers and knelt in the middle of the bed, where he performed fast-paced CPR on Dean.

Then he stopped, touched Dean’s pulse points, listened for breath or heartbeat. There was nothing.

He tried again, checked again for any response. There was none.

He threw himself into it again, looking at Dean’s dead face and crying. When he was exhausted, breathless, and choked with tears, he called 911.

September 27th. Sam stepped into the front door of Dean’s house and said, “Wow. You’ve made a lot of progress.”

A cold gust of wind caught the door and Sam fought it, pulling the door closed behind him.

“Not as much as I’d like, but it’s getting there,” Cas said, looking around. “He’d paid the rent through the end of the month, so we have a few more days.”

Labeled boxes were stacked all over the living room. Most of the surfaces and shelves were cleared. Sam looked down at a little sticker on Dean’s easy chair. “What’s the sticker for?”

“Most of the furniture came with the house, but Dean had bought several pieces. I walked through with the landlord and established which items were Dean’s, and put a sticker that says ‘D’ on them. Anything with that sticker on it is yours, and as soon as you decide what you want to do with them we’ll rent a truck and take them around to your place or, you were thinking, the Salvation Army in Idaho Falls, or any other – ”

His voice trailed off. Sam was looking down at the chair with an impossibly sad smile. “I remember when he bought this.”

Cas gave him a moment, fighting down a wave of nausea.

“The box on the sofa is Dean’s financial records, all sorted out. He had a savings account and a checking account, and an investment account that he paid into several times a year. That last one names you as beneficiary, but your lawyer will have to tell you what to do about the first two. They will reimburse you for the cost of the funeral, with quite a lot left over.”

Sam looked at him. “I should reimburse you. For your time.”

“No.”

“I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your helping me with the funeral arrangements, and – ” He waved his hand at the living room. “I’ve been in a place where I couldn’t do much. Literally, for a couple of days.”

“I think it was very wise of you, to do – to go – ”

“The term is ‘voluntary commitment,’” Sam said with a flick of a smile. “I was just – I wanted – ”

He stared down at the chair, his body going rigid. Then he blinked and deliberately looked back up at Cas. “OK. I’m supposed to focus on what’s right in front of me. So.”

“So.” Cas indicated another stack of boxes. “Kitchenware items over here. But his, his clothes I kept in the closets and drawers in the bedroom. I thought it would be easier for you to go through them that way, see if there’s anything you want.”

Sam nodded. “I don’t – ” He cleared his throat. “My arms are longer than his, legs too, I’ll probably give most of that away.”

“In that case – ”

Cas seemed to find a little difficulty continuing, and Sam asked, “Is there something you want?”

“If it has great sentimental value for you, it’s no problem. But, his leather jacket.”

Sam’s face contracted a little, but he smiled through it. “Yeah. I think he’d want you to have that.”

Cas swallowed hard.

“Everything you’ve done for me, for him. And pulling things together even after the police were treating you like a suspect. I still don’t believe that homophobic bullshit.”

“I don’t think it was homophobic.”

“Really? Rexburg cops?”

“No, from what I understand, it’s pretty much standard operating procedure to treat – circumstances like that as a, as suspicious.”

“Maybe.” Sam shook his head. “It was just over the last couple of days that I focused in on the fact that, while the Idaho Falls cops and their chaplain were bending over backward to help after they broke it to me, and getting me to the hospital and stuff, the Rexburg cops had you in the police station for hours, not caring about your grief. It’s – That was unjust.”

There was a moment of silence.

Then Cas said, “Well. As I say, it’s quite normal, under the circumstances. And they weren’t abusive, just – persistent. But I will say, it was a relief when the coroner signed off on suicide.”

Sam dropped his head, nodded. Then, again seeming to make a deliberate effort to re-focus, he looked at Cas and said, “That’s why I think you should have the Impala.”

Cas’ startled quiet was only two seconds long. “Absolutely not.”

“I can’t drive it.”

“You grew up with him when he bought it, when he was rebuilding it. It does need – Here’s an idea. While you can’t drive, I’ll come over once a week to drive it. In fact, we could make a standing appointment to drive the Impala someplace and have lunch. Unless that’s – you don’t think you can – you don’t want to – ”

“No. A, a good idea.”

“Take it on the highway, blow the carbon out, or whatever Dean would say.” He’d hoped that might get a bit of a smile from Sam, but it didn’t. “Then when your license is reinstated, the car will be ready for you to drive.”

“And I’ll crash it.”

“I don’t think so. I think you’ll keep it safe. For Dean.”

Sam sat down. He didn’t say anything for so long that Cas got a bit alarmed.

Then Sam wiped his eyes and said, “I killed Dean. What makes you think I’d take care of his car?”

Cas nodded. “I’ve had that feeling. That you were blaming yourself for his death.”

Sam sounded numb, as if he were saying something he’d repeated often, if only to himself. “He had no other problems. He liked his job, the people he worked with. He didn’t have money problems or health problems. He thought you were great. And I know – I mean, I know you guys were having a couple issues, but it wasn’t the kind of thing Dean would kill himself over. The only.”

He pulled in a breath. “The only problem he had was a drunkard brother who kept forgetting him and getting into car wrecks and stressing him out. I could tell – ” as Cas started to speak – “I could tell, the last few times together, he was getting to the end of his rope. And I kept thinking, yeah, I really need to start doing better. And I didn’t. And now it’s too late.”

His back bent as though he were collapsing from within.

Cas said quietly, “There were some things I told the police. They may have indicated to you – ”

After a moment Sam said, “Something about his fantasy life? They said something like that, I told the detective I didn’t know. I asked him how much he wanted to know about his brother’s fantasy life.”

“Which probably shut down that line of questioning pretty quickly. All the same, I think you need to know this, Sam. It will – I think you’ll find this disturbing, but it’s better than blaming yourself for Dean’s, for what Dean did.”

Sam looked up, and it struck Cas with force: His expression was the same Dean had worn when Cas came to release him from the basement, and he hoped it was because Sam was in rehab.

Cas tipped his head toward the kitchen. “Would you come with me, please?”

Seeming to brace himself, Sam rose and followed Cas down the basement stairs.

He hadn’t had a chance to arrange the basement the night he’d shown it to the police. But since the first time he’d talked to Sam after Dean’s death, he’d had the feeling that this conversation might be necessary, and he’d arranged everything there to have maximum effect.

He was actually glad that he’d thrown out the shattered chair well before Dean’s death; if the police had seen that they might have thought Cas killed Dean because he feared for his life. The shattered lavatory door, which Dean had intended to replace the weekend after he died, had been enough to raise questions by itself, of course, but he’d come up with an explanation that fit with the rest of what he’d told them.

But the bulletin board of photos grabbed Sam’s attention first. Cas saw Sam’s gaze moving over the Xed-out faces, his eyebrows drawing together slightly.

Cas stood behind him. “Dean called this the Murder Room.”

Sam turned with an uncertain smile. “Is that a videogame? – What the hell?”

He’d seen the lavatory door. Cas had left the light on inside, so it shone through every crack and hole in the door.

“Come on over here and sit down, Sam,” Cas said, walking toward the sofa and sitting down.

Sam started to follow Cas, saw the bed, stopped for a moment, then moved quickly to the sofa. Cas was sure, though, that Sam had seen the tableau he’d carefully set up – the handcuffs, a belt, and Dean’s sheathed knife, also on a belt. All were draped over different bars of the headboard, touching the pillows covered by the red bedspread, the whole lit by the red-shaded nightstand lamp.

Sam joined Cas at the sofa, but remained standing, staring down at the open box full of pictures and the cut-up magazines on the coffee table. An empty cardboard banker’s box sat on the floor next to the table.

“Was this what the detectives were talking about – the fantasies?”

“Dean told me once about your childhood,” Cas said gently.

Now Sam sat down. “You mean about Dad.”

Cas nodded. “And he told me something that I should have listened to more closely. The only reason I remember it is because I disagreed with it so much at the time. He said, ‘Sam and I split Dad between us. He got the alcoholism. I got the violence.’”

Sam thought, shook his head. “No. I mean, Dean had some anger issues a while back, but he got past them.”

“He didn’t get past them. He hid them.” Cas looked around the basement. “We used to sit down here and he’d tell me stories he made up. At first they were just stories about chasing down and killing vampires and werewolves, and they were violent stories, but with – fantastical victims, so it was just like listening to him tell the climax of a horror movie. Violent but unrelated to reality. And I – This is where I failed him. I, not you. I enjoyed them. They were, they were something we shared, part of our – something exciting – ”

Sam raised a hand. “I get – I got it. But I don’t see why you – why liking Dean’s stories means you failed him.”

“Because they got more violent. And the victims became people, not monsters that never existed. He could look – actually, you know, he had an amazing imagination – He could look at one of these pictures for a minute or so and start telling me what crime they committed, how he trapped them, what he did to them. Sometimes he talked about creating alibis so that innocent people wouldn’t be accused. But his favorite parts were always – the blood. His victims were criminals, and he would enjoy talking about this vigilante violence, rape and torture and murder, in detail.”

He gestured in the direction of the bed. “Did you see the knife on the belt over there?”

Sam gave an awkward half-nod.

“He wore that whenever he wasn’t at work or sleeping. He took the same kind of care of the knife that he did of the Impala. It played a large part in his fantasies.”

Sam’s face was baffled. He shook his head a little, but it didn’t look as if he were denying it, rather as if he were just having a hard time processing it.

“Recently he began saying that he wanted to take it to the next level. Actual, actual killing. And – Please forgive me, Sam. I should have told him to get some help or asked a professional what to do myself. But I just told him not to be silly, he didn’t really feel that way.

“About a month ago we went to a bar and a drunk came over to us – talk about homophobic – and when he insulted me, Dean knocked him down, pulled the knife, and put the point of it to his eye.”

Sam moved back a little on the sofa.

“It was – He’s all right, the drunk. I talked Dean into calming down and we were away from there before the police arrived. I could – I told the police about this, the bar and the name of the bartender, in case they wanted to check it out, and I can tell you if you want.”

Sam shook his head briefly. Cas waited for him to say something, but he just kept staring.

“I think part of the reason why I dismissed what Dean – what I now realize were cries for help – I never felt threatened myself. I stayed in the same house with him, slept with him, never had any fear for myself. Our – We did – Well, bruises weren’t unusual. But that was mutual and consensual. Even when he told me that he was beginning to think he would hurt someone, that the impulse was growing stronger, I just thought, no, Dean’s not insane. He wouldn’t hurt me, so he wouldn’t hurt anyone. He’ll get past this.

“You know, the only person he actually hurt – he just scared that drunk – the only person he actually hurt was himself. He used his knife to cut a ‘C’ on his upper arm, told me it was a sign of his permanent fidelity to me. About three weeks ago I woke up hearing a terrible thumping and crashing down here. When I got down here, the lavatory door was – ” he gestured – “like that, and Dean was leaning against the wall. He was gasping for air, in obvious pain. He told me that the door jammed and he threw himself against it over and over to get out. But it opens and closes perfectly well now, even with the damage. It suddenly struck me that he’d decided to take out his violent impulses on an inanimate object, and I looked at that door, and his back and arms later, and I realized, finally, how serious this was.

“So finally I started saying that he should get some professional help. He kept agreeing that it was a good idea, but he kept putting it off.”

Sam shook his head. “Great. Family tradition.”

“I don’t know if he was afraid of being locked up, or if he thought he could deal with it himself by turning himself into a battering ram, or if – or if he enjoyed the violent impulses in some way and didn’t want to let them go.”

“Probably a mix of all three.”

“Possibly. All I know is that the day of, the day of his death, he told me he was very afraid that he was going to hurt someone. It was someone who had hurt a former lover of Dean’s, and Dean told me he couldn’t stop thinking about how he was going to kidnap the man, all the things he was going to do to him. He told me,” Cas cleared his throat, “he told me he was afraid of himself. I told him we would call Madison County Mental Health the next day, and he calmed down. I cleaned up and he was watching TV. I told him I was going to bed early, it might be a long day tomorrow, and he said he’d be in soon. The last – ”

He paused, wiping his eyes. 

“Just as I was going back to the bedroom, he looked over at me and said, ‘Love you.’ He was, he’d said it before, but not often, and I should have realized. But I just told him, ‘I love you too’ and went – ”

His voice broke.

“Went back and left him sitting in the living room.”

A single sob wracked him.

Very quietly, “How did I not see any of this?”

“He went to great lengths to hide it from you. Something about being the older brother.”

Sam sagged a little, but his voice was unshaken. “Yeah. He protected me. You know he used to get into a fight with Dad when I was irritating him, so Dad would take it out on him instead of me? I was such a dumb kid. I didn’t even realize he was doing it deliberately until I was like twelve.”

Cas sighed.

“How, um, how did he get my pills, do you know?”

“He picked them up the day that he got your prescription from the hospital.”

“So he was planning this for more than a month.”

“I don’t know. Obviously. I think – My guess would be – When he first took them it was with good intentions. He, perhaps he was concerned about too many opioid pills being, being – ”

“In the same house with a drunk. You can go ahead and say it.”

Cas tipped his head and looked straight into Sam’s eyes. “He knew your worth. Even if you don’t.”

Sam’s face flinched. Then he said, “Thanks.”

“He told me that he’d disposed of the pills at a bin in the police station, and I thought that was a little drastic, but – I think that may have been his original plan. Then maybe he started thinking, Well, you never know when a pain pill might come in handy. And – I don’t see how it can’t have always been in the back of his mind, but I don’t think he was – consciously planning. I think,” Cas sighed, “I think he wanted to keep the option open. In case it became, in case he thought it became, necessary.”

Sam nodded.

“What I don’t understand – and I asked the police this, but of course they thought – ” Cas took a breath. “Why did he do that in the bed next to me? He must have realized, he must have known I’d wake up and – ”

After a moment Sam said quietly, “Did Dean ever tell you I tried to kill myself once?”

Cas nodded.

“I was in so much pain at the time, emotionally, mentally, I couldn’t bear to think about it continuing for another day. Much less dragging myself through months and years like that. But even while I was deciding, and figuring out how to do it – even while I was doing it – there was this little shred of hope. Maybe something miraculous would make me feel better. Maybe someone would stop me and be able to convince me, some way that I couldn’t convince myself, that I wasn’t the lousiest human being alive.”

His gaze shifted, and his shoulders sagged a little. “When you’re suicidal, you get really selfish. All you care about it is getting rid of your own pain. You don’t care about the pain you’re giving anyone else. I think Dean took those pills sitting right next to you, because his little shred of hope was saying, maybe Cas will wake up and miraculously have the perfect solution for my problem.”

“And I didn’t even wake up, much less – ”

“And that’s not your fault.”

Sam drove the point home with a moment’s silence. Then he said, “Dean was selfish to do that, not thinking about what it would be like for you. Or about leaving me with no family. The only.”

He lowered his head, raised it. “The only thing we can do is remember the good things about him. He wasn’t selfish normally. He was a good man. And a great brother.”

“Amen to that.”

Sam looked at the ceiling, his mouth open for a moment as if he were drowning or screaming. Then, “Cas, I hate to do it to you, but I’m bailing on you again.”

“Understandable. You’re just hearing about all this for the first time.”

“I’ll come back here this afternoon when you’re at work, and I will go through those boxes and the closets. Then I’ll meet you here at ten tomorrow morning and we’ll start taking out everything that fits in the car. We should be able to distribute at least some of those before you have to go to work. And you’ll be the driver, so I’ll be the box carrier.”

Cas smiled a little. “That sounds fair.”

Sam drew a deep breath. “On the thirtieth, when everything’s done, we’ll take the car and go out to lunch, like you suggested. You can drive it to my place and I’ll pay for a taxi to take you here to pick up your car.”

“I think I can probably pay for a taxi ride.”

“And then – same day, every week, after that? Say noon. Will that give you enough time before work?”

“More than enough.”

“OK.” Sam stood. “Gotta get the garage door fixed. Dean would kill me if I parked the Impala outside when I have a garage.”

“True.”

Sam started for the door. “See you tomorrow, then.”

“The TV – ” 

Sam turned.

“The TV, bed, and lamp down here are all Dean’s. You’ll need to decide – ”

Sam made a decisive gesture, his gaze flicking to the bulletin board and back to Cas. “I don’t want any of what’s down here. You can have it, or get rid of it somewhere.”

“Understood.”

“See you tomorrow,” and Sam disappeared up the basement stairs.

Cas looked around. The storage boxes of Dean’s stuff had already been taken upstairs. A handyman had already been out to measure the lavatory door, and would be coming in on the 29th, when Cas had a day off, to replace it. He’d already cleaned out the lavatory, refrigerator, and nightstand. He’d decide later what to do with Dean’s furniture and linens from the basement. The DVDs that had been on shelves under the TV set had been boxed and were also upstairs – except for the pornographic ones, which he’d discarded, along with the stack of magazines.

He picked up the empty banker’s box by the coffee table and went to the bulletin board, removing pictures and putting them in the box.

“Nice touch, asking Sam why he thought I killed myself right next to you,” Dean said. “If you’re Mr. Know-It-All, that sounds suspicious. If you’re just as baffled as everyone else about something, that’s more natural. Did you actually ask the cops that?”

Cas, still putting pictures into the box, nodded. “They still suspected me, thought.”

Dean shrugged. “They can suspect all they want. If there’s no evidence, there’s no evidence.”

He was sitting on the sofa, and rested his feet on the coffee table. He was wearing blue jeans and a white T-shirt; Cas could see him so clearly it made his heart hurt.

“That’s the upside of my having stimulated your imagination,” Dean said. “We can still have these conversations.”

“It’s a cold gift. I’ll go to bed tonight and you won’t be next to me.”

“Shouldn’t have killed me.”

Cas closed his eyes, clutching the box hard.

“But thanks for the presentation to Sam. I think he left here convinced that it’s not his fault.”

“I knew that’s what you’d want.”

“I think he was sober, too. You’ve helped him a lot, for such a little time. Are you sure you didn’t decide that you had the wrong Winchester?”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

Carrying the box as if it weighed 200 pounds, Cas went to the coffee table. He began putting loose pictures into the flat black box. Dean obligingly moved his feet.

“Sarah saw your obituary in the paper and came to the funeral. Sam introduced us. You were right, she seems nice.”

“Great. So Sam sobers up, gets the girl, and lives happily ever after. And all it took was me dying.”

“Consoling your ex after the death of his only sibling doesn’t equate to marrying him. And you know better than anyone how tenuous Sam’s sobriety can be.”

Dean nodded. Cas put the black box of pictures into the banker’s box, then sat on the sofa as if exhausted.

“I hope it happens that way, though,” Dean said. “I heard once that some people have to hit bottom before they get sober, and me dying – that would do it.”

Cas nodded.

“Is that why you did it?”

Cas closed his eyes again. “You know perfectly well why I did it.”

“Yeah, I was going to kill Sam. But either way, someone’s dead. Does it really make sense to you that the dead one is me?”

Cas stood up, pulled the trench coat off the back of the sofa, and began putting it on.

“And hey, come to think of it, why didn’t you call the county mental health folks?”

Cas rolled his eyes. “In the story for Sam, I was going to call them because you were unhappy with the impulses and afraid of yourself. Were you?”

“Well, no.”

“They couldn’t have helped someone who didn’t want help. They would have wanted to help me.”

“Get away from that maniac!”

“Exactly. They wouldn’t have understood how it was between us.”

“You mean, that neither of us would hurt the other one. – Oh, wait.”

Cas fastened the coat’s belt and took the box and lid over to the bed.

“Question still stands.” Dean was stretched out on the bed. “It was Sam or me. Why’d you pick Sam?”

“If that had been the choice, there would have been no choice. Of course I would have chosen you. But the moment that you became determined to murder Sam, I lost you. After Sam there would have been the man who hurt your former lover, and after him someone else. The serial murders would have warped the man I loved beyond recognition. And then prison would have completed his obliteration. You were insisting on a slow, painful self-destruction. I made it as quick as possible, and painless.”

“Like killing a sad werewolf.”

Cas could see Dean’s grin as clearly as if he were there, and he dropped his head, squeezing his eyes shut, leaning on the box.

“I had no choice,” he whispered. “You wouldn’t have been able to stop.”

He put the handcuffs, belts, and sheathed knife into the box, closed the lid, and carried it across the room.

“Will you?” Dean asked. “Be able to stop?”

Cas turned out the light and took the box up the stairs from the basement.

THE END


End file.
